I want to list months found in db by the first three letters as in an abbrevaition of the months i.e.: Jan Feb Mar Apr and so forth I can get the names by monthname(blah) but am stuck on converting strings to first three letters I"ve been trying explode("",$blah) but that doesn't work. I'm at a loss here I can't find the correct string function for this. help would be greatly appreciated. John Coder -- PHP Database Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php