replacing null characters

Hi all, I'm trying to work out how to replace '^@' characters with 0's. I've even tried replacing them with another character, and back to 0's again.. it still comes out as '^@' (which I'm guessing is null). The '^@'s only appear when a 0 is the first character in $value, the rest are ok. I've tried like this.. - $value = str_replace(0,"<!!>",$value); $value = str_replace("<!!>","0",$value); this - $value = str_replace(0,"0",$value); no luck. any suggestions? Thanks, ------------------------ Chris Smith http://www.squiz.net