>> it depends how well it caches, actually. does the search speed up >> after one traversal? pass. I've never tested this aspect of directory cacheing. VMS certainly supports such concepts, but I do know that its cache is (for example) not as efficient as MS/DOS's which (if set sufficiently large) can hold an entire file-system (names, not contents!) in memory. But this is really an issue of scaling: an MS/DOS system is sufficiently small that cacheing all headers is feasible; a VMS system is typically several orders of magnitude larger, and I think it is unlikely that all headers would ever be cached simultaneously. It's too long since I was a VMS tuner for me to start meaningfully researching this now... >> um, have you _read_ your copy of the TDS? No. Have you read Volumes A, B, C, D, & E from cover to cover?! >> where there is a problem is if you search >> tex/.... >> instead of >> tex/<format>/... >> possibly. Hmmm; this should be made clear in the instructions for setting logical names/environment variables...