>Then again my CD has over 5000 tfm files. If I do > \font\foo=foo.tfm >you are going to have to look at all of them, arent you? hard to see >how to cut that down rationally. With a file structure that is more than a stream of bytes. VMS has file *records* and *indexed* files. VMS *should* be able to do a binary search for a file name in a directory file. If you break your inputs directory into a zillion subdirectories then there is no rational way to search that tree. Does the TDS commit such a foul crime? Anyway, it is not VMS TeX that needs its own hashed database of input files. What a kluge! Donald Arseneau [log in to unmask]