i've poked about and made a new function "makecrypt(plainpass, salt)", and it works ok. basically, it is just a hook to the unix crypt() function. i was wondering if someone could tell me how, if possible, to implement a c function such that i can do: > SELECT makecrypt('secret', 'salt'); or > SELECT makecrypt('secret'); such that if salt is not specified, the c function would make one up. -- [ Jim Mercer [EMAIL PROTECTED] ] [ Reptilian Research -- Longer Life through Colder Blood ] [ aka [EMAIL PROTECTED] +1 416 410-5633 ]