thanks everyone. I thought blarg.next() looked a little strange--I'm just learning generators now and I'm glad too see that next(blarg) is the way to go.
The example really was just a toy or I would use an iterator. I do need the two (well, the several) generators to not be coupled together so they increment independently. I'll keep the zero-padding advice in mind--I didn't think of that one. what a great group this is. thanks again! --Tim -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
