Yes I was using the String class because I felt that the various methods would be useful. I am hoping to figure it out this way so that I can avoid working with string arrays.........lazy.....I know. I added Serial.println(sent.indexOf('a')); to get a better idea of what was going on. Interestingly enough the first time through the routine it shows the index of the character 'a' as zero/0 and the second time through the routine it shows the index of the character 'a' as -1. Why in the world would it not always index the first letter in the string to zero???? I can post my entire sketch but it is pretty ugly looking.