Yeah, it's funny how threads can just re-awaken, then twist and turn in different directions ...

But your talk about the REXX datastack got me to thinking (a dangerous thing) ... I'm wondering if it's possible to use the Windows CLIPBOARD as a data staging area. I think there are reskit-like programs for piping DOS command output to the clipboard. Then, if one could use COM to read this data back into the script ... hmmm .... kinda like this (concept only) :

shell 'cmd /c dir c:\*.exe | clipbrd.exe'
$clipbrd = createobject("?")
for each $line in $clipbrd.buffer
?"$line"
next

Something like that anyway. Thing is, I haven't done any research on this and I'm not too sure if there is a clipboard object ??? Just throwing this out as a concept ... using the clipboard in this fashion would sure be handy ...

-Shawn