To follow-up my own post... which is sad I know, but hey... Saturday, July 9, 2005, 7:08:37 PM, I wrote: RD> The difference is the extra hoops your reg exps will have to jump RD> through, and have to jump through perfectly. You will have to disallow RD> all <'s and >'s, but do allow them for <i>, <b>, etc etc. Then check I forgot to add that BB style codes come into real use for things a little more advanced than <i>. For example [red] to colour some text. If you wish to allow this in HTML format you can either invalidate your XHTML and allow <font> tags, otherwise allow spans with embedded CSS?! Even if you do allow <font> you're then parsing for color="" and nothing else, with potential variable width colours. After a short while you'll find yourself having to write an HTML validator tool (and I'm sorry but I have *never* seen one that worked flawlessly yet). Best regards, Richard Davey -- http://www.launchcode.co.uk - PHP Development Services "I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them." - Isaac Asimov -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php