Russell, > That's right and correct (as per the original) OK, I haven't looked closely at the original code, but if this is the case then I believe that this behaviour should be corrected. Well done on what you've done so far though. By the way, I'm still confident that separating out non-wildcard patterns, and handling them differently (by sorting both them and the comparing strings prior to matching) would also make a big difference in speed. > > using - apath\*books.doc - as the pattern > > would your code not also find - apath\anyname.doc - as a match Angus