>>>Yes, I've already thought about using a local, though it's instantaneous even without it...
>>
>>I know how sensitive some of your work is to perfomance, so...
>
>Well, it's not like we login 1,000,000 times in a loop, George < s >

Yeah, but you know how anal I can get about this stuff< g >.
>
>>I think you're thinking of the start position parameter. If TALK is ON, and the start position is greater than the length of the string an error is generated. Otherwise, it isn't and an empty string is returned. AFAIK, no SETting affects the second (length) parameter (at least there's no doc on it).
>
>Okay, thanks, I'll dump that part, then.

All I can tell you is that I've never had a problem with it and have used it literally hundreds of times.