Thanks for the various reports. I am guessing that the problem is there pre-5.4 on many platforms, and fixed in 5.4. (I've also checked it on IDL 5.3 on linux, and received a tasty segmentatio fault). So, all I have to do is get the latest version of IDL, then my life will once again have meaning YAY. Thanks for the help IDLers! Cheers, bob stockwell stockwell at co-ra.com