>Thanks Vlad, I'll give these a try this weekend - I've got a basic for loop working (at least it works) but it's a little slow on my old notebook. I don't

Basically, I think it's difficult to beat a STL-map or CMapStringToOb with a simple in-house algorithm. These standard classes were written by experts and they probably have a lot of time to do it (which you may not have). More, they are tested and used by hundreds of thousands of programmers all around the world. So, you can bet a lot on them!

I just read today more on STL and its container templates (STL-map is one of them). I had no time to try anything, but I was very happy with what I've read in terms of design and performance. I would give it a try even it would be only for your experience with STL. BTW, the design is just wonderful (when you understand it :)) and very flexible.

Vlad