I just wrote a little C program that I use on large message folders to speed up the process of scanning large numbers of messages. You have to set up a format file to only pass the message number plus the subject. My filter ignores the message number because it always changes, but if there are more than two messages with the same subject, you only hear the first scan. It silently skips all the rest of the lines with the same subject and then wakes up when the subject changes. I have everything you need to make it run in a uuencoded file that decodes to form a file called subjects.tar.gz. When you uudecode it, it unpacks to a directory called subjects. In there is a file called doc.txt and the source called subjects.c . I tell you how to build it and what its limitations are . The main thing that throws it off is when several people post subjects that are essentially the same subject, but have been re-spelled or otherwise reworked. My filter does a few tricks to get around common variations, but it is not sophisticated at all. All I do is to force all words in the subject to upper case, remove all whitespace and punctuations. That still isn't enough, but anything else gets in to the realm of very complex. This is quick and dirty. The uuencoded file is 60 lines long and I could post it to the list, but that's not fair to those who don't care. Martin McCormick WB5AGZ Stillwater, OK OSU Center for Computing and Information Services Network Operations Group