Elan, "How will it interpret the " ' " as part of the string or end of " ' ". Isn't it weired for RPG??" The reason the compiler wants the second quote is precisely to interpret between an embedded single quote and the ending delimiter. When it sees two consecutive quotes within a string it knows a single quote is desired instead of the first quote denoting the end of the string. IMHO, it would be weird for RPG to *not* use some escape mechanism for the embedded delimiter. In the early days of punch cards and 48-character belts on impact printers, using a second quote probably made alot more sense than a character like . And you also (at the time) didn't have a double quote character on the print belt, so it didn't make sense to allow your choice of either a single or double quote as the beg/end delimiter with the opposite available as an embedded character. Doug