I enclosed an eclipse project. If you import this to eclipse (ganymede version) it does a pretty good job at validating and helping you work with DFDL. The 'variables' subdir contains an example of using variables to bind parameters for contained "payloads" of an enclosing envelope. The example is that the payloads are either absolute or relative path names, but the separator is specified by the envelope along with the character set. So, for example: the contents could be C:\a\b\c or C:/a/b/c or d\e\f or d/e/f. I'm curious as to what people think of this example. It's pretty short. Note: Please do not send sensitive data in unencrypted form in email. We cannot provide secure transit for email over the Internet. Mike Beckerle | CTO | Oco, Inc Tel: 781-810-2125 | 100 Fifth Ave, 4th Floor, Waltham, MA 02451 | mbeckerle@oco-inc.com | www.oco-inc.com <http://www.oco-inc.com/> Blog: cboblog.typepad.com <http://cboblog.typepad.com/> TURNING DATA INTO ANSWERS. FASTER THAN YOU EVER IMAGINED.