I've done some cleanup on my version of fixed_string at http://www.animats.com/source This now conforms to Dunn's decision on length, i.e. "fixed_string<char,4> s" now has space for four characters plus a trailing null. I decided that "operator[]" had to let users reach the trailing null without a subscript error, so that the classic C idiom of a loop stopped by the trailing null for (i=0; s[i]; i++) would still work. Because "operator[]" can't tell a read from a write, this offers the possibility of overstoring the trailing null. But c_str() will always reset the trailing null if necessary. The functions of fixed_string are now all accessable via fixed_string_base, as virtual functions, which was an ommission in the previous version. "insert", "erase", and the various substring functions still aren't in. Soon. We're approaching convergence on this. John Nagle Animats