>>>This didn't work for me. It took 32 s. to create a file and the returned files are in DOS like way (short names).
>>
>>I have a similar directory, with 27400 small images. First I thought you had foxpro.pif which uses command.com instead of cmd.exe, so I invoked each and ran dir >dir.txt. The time in both cases was below a second.
>>
>>The format of the text was like this (with just plain DIR, no switches):
>>

22.01.2005  11:17            39,749 CP701760.jpg
>>22.01.2005  11:17            35,626 CP701761.jpg
>>09.03.2004  12:37            23,487 No-Show-Image.jpg
>>07.02.2006  13:27                60 nocopy.BAK
>>07.02.2006  13:29               284 nocopy.bat

>>
>>Maybe you could use shell_execute to run the command? Just create a .bat file and run that. Shouldn't take that long. Even with my disk being recently defragmented, the difference shouldn't be so large.
>
>Would it still show the DOS window? I'd like to avoid it. I also didn't see times, only the file names like 1234~.jpg I run the command exactly as Hilmar wrote using my folder name and *.jpg
>
>Also note, that the directory resides on the server, not on my local drive.

I just tried:
DIR /S *.* > testme.txt with remote connection to our office server. This commands runs for about 5 secs and creates a beautiful file :-). Not from VFP, because we didn't have VFP installed on server, just command prompt., also it stores all files with theitr actual names, not the short version :-)

If I run:
DIR /S *a*.dbf > testme.txt it returns me about 8000 names (no time to test if ALL they are correct, but first 150 are) for less then 2 secs.