And a year-2000 related question: might it be best to change strftime so that "%x" yields, for example, 1996-08-22 rather than 08/22/96 as is currently true?

If you are going to follow the standards, then strftime() should replace %x with the "locale's appropriate date representation". That means that the date representation should vary based on the locale that the caller is running under. The default locale is the C locale. I am at home and I do not keep the standards here, so I cannot look up what that should be, but I can do it later tonight or tomorrow. alan perry former standards and libc guy current zoneinfo and device driver interfaces guy