I've just sent Andrew a module that parses and formats ISO 8601 dates, at least as far as the W3C profile supports. See http://www.w3.org/TR/NOTE-datetime for the profile. We're planning on it going into the xml.utils package. -Fred -- Fred L. Drake, Jr. <fdrake@acm.org> Corporation for National Research Initiatives 1895 Preston White Dr. Reston, VA 20191