in the first draft of the script i had used [ $+(%,Input.Buffer.,$cid.chan,.count) ] to keep count on the number of lines there were before i woke up and though doh the hash table keeps track of that itself with $hget( [ $+(Input.Buffer.,%cid.chan) ] ,0).item or should I say ($hget($+(Input.Buffer.,%cid.chan),0).item, by then the brackets had migrated out and it was working so i decided not to bother with checking if i could withdraw them, dont fix whats not broken as they say.
It was the reason i ended up posting about a looking for doc on good [ ] explanations.

I still wonder why he needs to type in 1000's of characters of text in one shot, byt the time id get that much typed the conversation would have changed subject.