I have a statement somewhere in the code that boils down to comparing a string object with an integer. i.e. var1 <= var2 where var1 = '20' and var2 = 100 The code runs ok but the above comparison always return 0 !! It took me quite an effort to finally pin it down. Is it the programmer's responsibility to check the type of var1 and var2 before using <= ??? --HP