>>>>Did you not see message #1173916 ?
>>>>
>>>This message doesn't explain why I'm getting wrong results using mask for searching.
>>
>>Naomi
>>
>>There is no need to explain why. Those functions simply do not work as you wish.
>>
>>You did not indicate that you actually tried the code.
>>
>>I deliberately separated out the extension from the stem. The extension is used to keep just the jpg files BEFORE the stem is checked for the skeleton.
>
>I tried it. It took 23 sec. to put all files into the cursor. (I removed check for mask for now). Using Filer for the same purpose proved wrong, since it took 63 sec.
>
>Using your code with a mask took about the same 23 sec. I think, this would not be an acceptable speed for my purpose.

Putting many files into one directory can slow down your system, espoecially if you happen to click on the directory with explorer. Here is a comment I wrote earlier to someone with a related problem:

I would say that storing the pictures as separate files would be the best solution. Personally I store about 6 million pictures in a directory tree, and all the pictures have numeric, 8 digits, names. I have created 9 directories named 1 to 9, and each directory has 10 subdirectories, named 0 to 9. So picture 12345678.jpg goes into directory 1\2, picture 34567890.gif goes into 3\4 and so on. Dividing the pictures into several subdirectories is significantly faster than storing them all in one directory. In my table, I have one C(8) field for the picture names, the extension I find programmatically. I have made a simple User Defined Function to find the path to the pictories.