Double dots you find over certain vowels in French, German and other languages. In French it is used to denote the fact the vowels are distinct from one another. A good example is the word Noel, where there is an umlaut over the e. This means that you pronounce it no-el, not nol as you would otherwise. Kind regards, Denys. . . Denys Beauchemin Hicomp America, Inc. [log in to unmask] www.hicomp.com (800) 323-8863 (281) 288-7438 fax: (281) 355-6879 -----Original Message----- From: Art Bahrs [SMTP:[log in to unmask]] Sent: Monday, June 16, 1997 1:08 PM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: Date handling in COBOL (week numbers) -Reply Um.... Lars??? What is an "Umlaut" ???? hehehe Art "Grammatorically and Spelling Challenged" Bahrs >>> Lars Appel <[log in to unmask]> 06/16/97 10:47am >>> As I happened to be asked a similar question by someone else already, I have been digging around in my source archives and found -ahem- some Pascal example with several date-related procedures/functions. Might be relatively easy to rewrite in COBOL or any other language. Whoever would like a copy, please let me know. I'll send it with the reply instead of bothering all list(en)ers by posting the whole thing. But one word of warning... The comments, var and procedure names use German language (no Umlauts though)... I have no idea what I have been smoking or drinking at the time when I put this stuff together... ;-) Lars. PS: Maybe someone can port it to COBOL and ENGLISH for us...