> Reasonable or not is not of any matter.. <stuff about stack space> Well, then how do you account for it working in perl5.005_03? It works for both a good match and a bad (just tested it). IMO this really has to work in order for me to be able to grep through C/C++ code. I can't have something like: a = '0 // missing ' - core??? ... ... ... coring my program (coring because of a syntax error in the C!). If you don't have a fix, do you have a suggestion for a workaround? ( I hasten to add, if there is a workaround necessary, then there is also a backwards compatibility issue here.) Ed