I spent today trying to figure out why some parsing was going awry. The problem stems from trying to emit a warning message while reprocessing the pc->tmpfile data. viz.: open_tmpfile(); hq_open(); count = do_list(&ld); hq_close(); rewind(pc->tmpfile); while (fgets(buf, sizeof(buf), pc->tmpfile) != 0) { if (something_wrong(buf)) { error(WARNING, "something wrong"); continue; } ... etc. After the error() invocation, the data have been scribbled on because of this code: if ((fp != stdout) && (fp != pc->stdpipe)) { fprintf(fp, "%s%s%s %s", new_line ? "\n" : "", type == WARNING ? "WARNING" : type == NOTE ? "NOTE" : type == CONT ? spacebuf : pc->curcmd, type == CONT ? " " : ":", buf); fflush(fp); } "fp" being a global variable that is set to pc->tmpfile. I suppose you can say, "works as expected", but it surely isn't as I would expect. How about a nice "standard_error" wrapper that hides and restores that "fp" global variable thingy while invoking __error()? I can do it myself, but I really do not think it advisable for crash client code to fiddle with what seems to me to be internal state. Thanks! - Bruce