> the builtins, but not being able to do things like > '[1,2,3]'.length drives me a little nuts.
You mean like '[1,2,3]'.__len__() That gets you the length of the string, which is what one would expect, calling the __len__() method on a string. The same works for an array: [1,2,3].__len__() If you want to convert the string to the thing it's representing, you can use the eval() function: eval('[1,2,3]').__len__() All very straightforward. -tkc -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list