>one might want to consider _exit() pure Yeah, that's right, the compiler can put in a call to it at the start of the program, and save the value it returns :-) -- Richard -- Richard Tobin, JANET: R.Tobin at uk.ac.ed AI Applications Institute, ARPA: R.Tobin%uk.ac.ed at nss.cs.ucl.ac.uk Edinburgh University. UUCP: ...!ukc!ed.ac.uk!R.Tobin