[I'm resending this because I think it was lost since I wasn't subscribed from this address. Apologies if it appears twice.]
We essentially have Single-line Block =========== ===== {<<<} {[[[} {>>>} {]]]} {|||} {III} {'''} {"""} or 1 field indicator and 8 justifiers (that perform only 4 different justifications). Why not something like Single-line Block =========== ===== [<<<] {<<<} [>>>] {>>>} [|||] {|||} ['''] {'''} which distinguishes the 2 main field types and gives us only the 4 justifiers we need? I can appreciate the elegance and power of bracketing the fields even though it screws up one- and two-character fields. And while it's nice to be down from 3 metacharacters in Perl 5 formats to 1 it doesn't feel quite worth it when every justification specifier must be doubled. Having two sets of field delimiters means that if a new justifier is added we need only come up with one character for it. It also clearly distinguishes the field type for two-character fields. Neither of these is a strong argument for changing the existing design but I'm wondering why the first table above would be easier to learn/remember than the second. -- Rick Delaney [EMAIL PROTECTED]