True about the 32bit pointers, I just assumed Su^H^HOracle had changed something about the struct layout in 64bit versions. Otherwise the whole problem shouldn't exist as the change would be transparent to whatever C code retrieves the struct and passes it to Perl. In any case that's the leven the problem should be solved on. Actually I've never written anything for AS/400 either and especially with IBM's compatibility-back-to-the-60s fetishism you're right that it shouldn't matter at all. Wonder why the OP seemed to have a similar problem there.