>Have you looked into XML serialization? Reading and writing XML using string functions is not always the fastest and easiest way.

In my particular case the data are already saved in the text column in pseudo-XML format (pseudo, because the root node may be missing).

My task is to format the data the same way it was done in VFP to pass to our C++ application. In VFP there was recursive function using strextract and the like string functions. May be that's why I was thinking that I do need recursion in C# also, although it may be not true.