Did we decide whether an escape character can precede a pad character hence, making it part of the content, not the padding? E.g., suppose pad character is P, escape character is E. then can 'abcdEPPPP' be interpreted as 'abcdP' then 3 pad characters, or did we decide that padding ignores escape chars? I think we decided that padding is outside of the escape blocks, so that if [ and ] are my escape block start and end, then PPP[PabcP]PPP would be 'PabcP' as content. but I don't think we commented on regular single escape character characters and pad char. It seems consistent to me that 'abcdEPPPP' is abcdP as content. but if not, then 'abcdEPPP' stripping off the trailing padding ends with the escape character, so the escape character is escaping nothing hence the content would be 'abcd' I believe. Comments? ...mike -- Mike Beckerle | OGF DFDL WG Co-Chair Tel: 781-330-0412