I have an old example of python regular expressions, being used to parse audio,cddb, see CDDB_File.py and re-cache.py Its old, Q+D, only one way of doing it, and has a 'shift-line-in' mechanism. I had forgotten that module re throws exceptions, when boolean retval would seem more natural http://www.gps.talktalk.net/LGPL/index1.html#mp3_hissy_fit # Graham