1stly, thankyou for the welcome, you should big up linuxforums.org for that one! hehe.
2ndly, THANK YOU for the code. although that looks fantastic, i will have to 'mod' it to satisfy the criteria from the lab manual. ive actually made some progress from the blinking cursor, but as its 4pm on friday and im off to leeds tonite, i need to make a move. hehe.
CHEERS
--Christopher Guyatt (guyattc2@cs.man.ac.uk)