> Guess regex are the only useful solution here. When you consider to use > built-in functions, just remember, that for example '0xAF' is an integer > too, but '42.00' isn't. Shoot...I hadn't considered how PHP might handle hex or octal strings when casting to int. (Again, not in front of a computer where I can test it right now. ) Regexes have problems with more than 9 digits for 32-bit ints. I guess to some degree it depends on how likely you are to experience values that large. Andrew