> (but then, who should display an SQL statement as HTML?
> An HTML based tracer, perhaps?).

Take a look at HTMLReport, and there are several other components out
there for publishing to and processing of HTML. I think this is why
the '<<' '>>' characters may not be appropriate, since HTML is much
more likely to be involved in this sort of thing than other language
(except perhaps RTF).

IBO will still let you change the characters if/when necessary, its
just a matter of choosing characters that will cause problems least
often.

> Otherwise, % or %% would be fine.
>
> I'd avoid anything that is used with other meanings
> elsewhere, such as square brackets and <>.

I nearly wrote something similar until I realised how hard it is to
find. You will notice your '%' character in the list below :-)

Operators from Pascal...
@, not, ^, *, /, div, mod, and, shl, shr, as, +, -, or, xor, =, >, <,
<>, <=, >=

Operators from C...
., .*, ::, ?:, +, -, *, /, %, ++, --, =, *=, /=, %=, +=, -=, <<=, >>=,
&=, ^=, |=, &, |, ^, ~, ~, >>, <<, ? (I got sick of writing before I
ran out of operators)

Would you like me to go on?

Geoff Worboys
Telesis Computing