Ryszard: I reproduced your bug on a Linux system (libc5) using both the egcs-1.1b and gnu 2.7.2.2 compilers. I then compiled it using egcs-1.1b targeted to a ColdFire evaluation board I have, using newlib for the library, and it gave the expected (correct) output when run. I think this points to a library bug. Mike Gruber