If you want FAST you don't want to automate the native windows search function. It is in a word woeful. First it recurses the directory tree for every search and second you can only AFAIK pass it a drive or list of dirves to search, thus is your target is C:\something\stuff_here\ you will search everything else on C:\ for no good reason.

You can get a recursive search in a couple of lines with File::Find but if you want SPEED you recurse the tree periodically, store the results in a database sturcture and seacrh your DB to find your files. All you need to do is update the database periodically. This is the *nix approach of excellent tools like locate.

Locate lives in the findutils GNU package and you can get a Win32 port of it from here amongst other places. For blinding speed you won't do a lot better. To be frank you will never use Win32 native search again. Get a port of grep while you are at it and then all you need to do is:

# update the locate DB
C:\>locate -u
# find whatever something you want....
C:\>locate some | grep thing
[download]

cheers

tachyon

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