I've begun using external methods and am trying to better understand the context they run and and how to handle exceptions. I have concluded the following (and I don't recall reading some of these in any documentation) (please correct me if I'm wrong) 1 external methods run in the same interpreter as zope 2 external methods have access to a larger namespace and therefor more functionality 3 external methods inherit the same namespace available to scripts running inside zope 4 external methods are not launched as forked or spawned child processes 5 external methods do not have access to stdin/stdout 6 external methods must return only strings, but they may be unicode string as long as they are valid xml string data Something that I don't understand is how to handle an exception. For example, if I have an external method that appends data to the end of a file, if there is an IOException how to I capture it and send a message back to zope with something informative? -- David Bear phone: 602-496-0424 fax: 602-496-0955 College of Public Programs/ASU University Center Rm 622 411 N Central Phoenix, AZ 85007-0685 "Beware the IP portfolio, everyone will be suspect of trespassing"