Nico Williams scripsit: > "datetime" and such are interpretations of more basic datatypes, An interval of time is not a string, any more than a number is a string. They are both *representable* by strings, but everything is: you can represent a human being or the planet Saturn by a string. > they belong in pre-agreed/documented schema rather than on the wire. The decision to do so is arbitrary. -- John Cowan <cowan@xxxxxxxx> http://www.ccil.org/~cowan One time I called in to the central system and started working on a big thick 'sed' and 'awk' heavy duty data bashing script. One of the geologists came by, looked over my shoulder and said 'Oh, that happens to me too. Try hanging up and phoning in again.' --Beverly Erlebacher