Thank you all for your help. Alex's listify does the job well. I will reconsider using an atomic "Thing" class with Michaels' safeList. Bengt wins the prize for reducing sLen to one line!
I still feel like I'm working against the grain somewhat, (Mike's right, I am coming at this with a "C++ mindset) but at least I have tools to do it efficiently :) Brendan -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
