A practical chiral capillary electrophoresis method using randomly sulfated beta-cyclodextrin was developed for the quantitative determination of the chiral purity of a pharmaceutical compound. A systematic method development approach was conducted by modifying selected parameters such as the concentration of the chiral selectors, buffer pH, organic modifiers, buffer concentrations and type, temperature and applied voltage. The results of the investigation permitted an improved understanding of the separation mechanism. Two facile strategies for the reversal of the enantiomer elution order are also described. The optimized method was validated in terms of variability of the chiral selector, linearity, sensitivity, accuracy, recovery, ruggedness, and precision; (C) 2000 Elsevier Science BN. All rights reserved.