> No, but Delphi doesn't eat this either. You can't read() write() variants. True. Unfortunately it is also impossible to compile this little program.. uses crt, sysutils, varutils; var x:variant; i:integer; o:shortstring; begin readln(i); x:=i; x:=x+1; o:=x; writeln(o); readln; end. I guess I have to replace all the variants.. Willi