Thanks. I knew that there must be a way to print as you go, but, not ever needing that feature, couldn't pull it out of my hat (and I meant to mention that earlier, but oh well...and I think I have actually used flush() by accident when I was looking for purge() ). Ok, "wrong solution" was maybe too strong..."not the quickest" or "not if performance is a big concern" maybe would've been more appropriate. But I don't think not mastering something will ever keep me from attempting to benchmark it :-)