I doubt str is intended to work the way you want it to. I certainly wouldn't use it that way. The choice of data structure here is inappropriate, use a vector not a list. If you absolutely must do what you are asking, then simply write your own function. Use a heuristic for object length, say if less than 200 do such and such, otherwise do something else. In regards to some of your other posts, I think the R documentation is very good. Have you ever tried writing software documentation? It's a lot of work, which makes the R documentation in the standard packages quite impressive. If using a function for a subject area I'm not familiar with, I expect the unexpected. For mature software, the arguments section is extremely useful. Often when I'm using a function I forget the exact arguments, so have to look them up. For functions that I'm not familiar with, or unclear about, then I read the details section. Sometimes I might read it several times. -- Charlotte Maia http://sites.google.com/site/maiagx/home (this is a response to the website, not the MIME digest)