LOOKFOR is an MS-DOS string-searching program, that's *unbelieveably* fast. It does simple Boolean ANDs and ORs and prefix wildcards. Let's you browse files, cut & paste sections to disk files. After entering the search, it takes off like the proverbial bat. You see the display of file progress; it's unbelievable. For that matter, DTSEARCH had the same kind of speed demon performance! E.g., I just exited this wordprocessor to DOS, and searched for a nonexistent term in a directory containing 40 files, some 900K. Total search time was a tiny bit over 3 seconds. (It's smart enough to skip .EXE, .COM, .ARC. and .ZIP files. User can modify these as desired; f'r instance, I have added .BAK to the 'ignore' list.) This is S*I*M*P*L*I*C*I*T*Y in text retrieval. It's so easy and fast...it's like a DOS utility. I just added it to my UTIL directory, so I have it handy whenever I need it. In fact, although one of my areas of expertise is free-text databases, I don't use 'em myself. I just use LOOKFOR to find any text on my disk, fast. Ernest Perez eperez@utdallas.edu