>The routine seems a little extravagant where it need not be.
>
>The first REPLACE, which could well be executed several times, seems unnecessary to me - surely you could use a memvar instead and do the changes into it first??? Then *no* inner REPLACEs going on, so should be much faster.

Again, you are perfectly right Jim.

As for a 2 minutes and a half investment, I think it is a good start.