On Fri, 15 Dec 2000, Steve Drees wrote: > somestring[:1999] is the first 2000 characters of somestring. Not to be a poseur but: somestring[:1999] is the first 1999 characters of somestring, because in Python indices begin at 0, e.g.: a="0123" print a[:3] gives "012" which are the first 3 characters from a. bye, Jerome Alet