argv0, you mean that global variables can flush to disk (via vars.ini), not local ones, right?

hixxy - Short of an ideal workaround (somehow just forcing "" into a %variable), this is the best I've seen so far -- especially $cr or $lf as opposed to $crlf (since we're talking single character substitution here). Substitution is much easier to adapt existing code to, vs. solutions that insert additional characters which your length checking and matching and assorted complex regexps recipes must be made to ignore. Thanks! One problem I did notice off the bat: global variables with $cr or $lf get truncated at the $cr or $lf itself by mIRC when it restarts (vars.ini = text file = you can't have linefeeds inside a line). However, I'm mostly concerned with local variables in my case, so that's no problem.