Sorry, I didn't qualify my problem correctly. The problem comes in when the column list is too long, opposite of what you tested. Also, I doubt the problem is duplicable in such certain conditions, so if you want to try the full program, it will take about 5 minutes to download and test and then try the same test, except with the gibberish in the first ()'s and not the second ()'s.
I tried to look at your code, but can't compile because of: #include <xmlparse.h> whatever that is. If you want me to look at this, can you please try and boil it down to a reproducable test case, or failing that mail me a .zip file privately containing everything needed to build the app, plus a text file containing the input that demonstrates the problem. Remember that I'm likely to be building on Win32 not linux: I know next to nothing about debugging gcc built apps, so there's no mileage to be gained by me trying to do that rather than you. John Maddock http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/john_maddock/index.htm