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?

Absolutely! It infuriates me that such a result should ever be returned. Any concession to the US-only we'll-do-it-our-way-and-never-change-and-claim-to-be-best-no-matter-how-bad- it-is all-numerical way of writing dates should be eliminated. Alex LIVINGSTON Macintosh Support Computing & IT (C&IT) Australian Graduate School of Management (AGSM) The University of New South Wales (UNSW) Sydney NSW 2052 AUSTRALIA E-mail : alex@agsm.unsw.edu.au; cit@agsm.unsw.edu.au (C&IT) Facsimile: +61 2 93137279 Telephone: +61 2 99319264