Using the XML_parser class... weird tag names - how to deal?

I am trying to use the XML_Parser class with an XML file that has named most of its elements in the following manner... <TFLATCHARACTERISTIC> <TFLATCHARACTERISTIC.oid_flatgestione>10054</TFLATCHARACTERISTIC.oid_flatgestione> <TFLATCHARACTERISTIC.cod_characteristic>&#37;</TFLATCHARACTERISTIC.cod_characteristic> </TFLATCHARACTERISTIC> The problem here, is that the way I understand it, to use the XML_Parser class, I need to define function names for all the different tags I want to work with, but with a period in the middle of the tag name, how is it possible to define a function with a period in its name. The following fails with a parse error.... function TFLATCHARACTERISTIC.oid_flatgestione () { // do something with the data } I even tried concatenating the tag name like so but that failed as well... $tagname = "TFLATCHARACTERISTIC" . "." . "oid_flatgestione"; function $tagname() { // do something here with the data } Thanks in advance, Alan ************************************ Alan T. Miller amiller@hollywood101.com http://www.alantmiller.com ************************************