Hi, Unfortunately I couldn't make it last night - I've got some sort of flu thing. Given I wasn't there, I hope this isn't out of context. > s/^\s+//g; s/\s+$//g; Why have the g modifier on these? As they are anchored, surely there is only one occurence? How would the following compare with the other two? s/^\s*(.*?)\s*$/$1/ Peter