Ok, I'll try to be less verbose. Given the strings 'xxxxx: xxxxx "xxx xxx"' and 'xxxxx: xxxxx "xxxxxxx"' If I use xx=split.string(string," ") I get xx[2] as "xxx in the first instance and "xxxxxxx" in the second. I need to get "xxx xxx". Ie, I need to get everything within the quotes as xx[2]. Please? - fleet -