BL> If FILES.10 does not exist, but "10" exists in the DAT file with a 
BL> directory ;liusyed against the number "10", then it would be written
BL> (without the fancy header). You'd have to edit FILES.10 yourself, to
BL> add the header graphics. If you remove "10" from the DAT file but

BL> Does this sound alright to you?

I'd prefer you just read the title from filearea.ctl and dispensed with the
graphics headers, and got the descriptions from files.bbs (BTW, the
files.bbs allows you to use wildcards, so that you can go FNEWS*.* fidonews
etc).  You can use patmat() from OZPD to do this.

BL> Is there a clever way to look for a particular line in a file?

No.  If you had enough memory you could read it all in and do a strchr() on
'\n' as the fastest way of getting to the nth line.

BL> What I'll do, is have a list of file names from the directory, and
BL> run through each FILE.nn looking for it. In the worst case, I'll have
BL> to run through the whole file for every name, and this insults my
BL> intelligence as being too braindead even for me. Is there a clever
BL> "shortcut" way of keeping track of where everything is? 

If you kept the description list sorted, then you could do a binary search
for an exact match.  But forget about that, it'll all be in cache anyway,
and most of my stuff is done with wildcards.  SPECIALR is the only one that
isn't.  BFN.  Paul.
@EOT:

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