looks strange to me if i look for a str using strstr it gives me the starting index of the string. so let say if i'm looking for "firstName" in "<Info firstName=\"sam\" lastName=\"Smith\" />" using strstr(ptr, "firstName"); i would get the pointer pointing to the f in firstName. whereas if i use strchr and using a slight variation of the string mentioned above(suing ' instead of ") "<Info firstName='sam' lastName='Smith'/>" strchr(ptr, "'") returns a pointer pointing after the ' so a printf("[%s]\n", strchr(ptr, "'")); would print [ lastName='Smith'/>] which doesn't make sense to me. can someone shed some light. TIA ! -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-c-programming" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html