Hello Jim, JM> If that's the goal, why not use exerb with the ZLib option turned on? JM> The resulting binaries can't be grepped for source. JM> Sure, all someone would need to do is a little reverse engineering on JM> exerb to figure out how to extract the source, or simply have memorized JM> what a ZLib header looks like, but seems to me it's a "reasonable JM> barrier" for the purpose you're describing. JM> That said, it'd still be a great thing to have a general, more secure JM> way of securing ruby source. I'd like to be able to take advantage of JM> it as well. JM> Jim Moy All this methods are killed with my 3 minutes 4 line hack. You must change the interpreter - there is simply no other way. Now that i posted the patch even a script kid that can use "google" can crack your code. -- Best regards, emailto: scholz at scriptolutions dot com Lothar Scholz http://www.ruby-ide.com CTO Scriptolutions Ruby, PHP, Python IDE 's