Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!wuarchive!wums2!thomas_m
From: thomas_m@wums2.wustl.edu
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hypercard
Subject: Hypercard FIND problems...
Message-ID: <3747.26af01bd@wums2.wustl.edu>
Date: 26 Jul 90 19:44:12 GMT
Lines: 24


	This may have been asked before and I just was not around to read the
answer, but does anyone know a way to get around the following problem or what
makes hypercard do this?

	When I type:  find "XXX"  it will find a field (if there is one) which
contains the characters "XXX" in a very short time (this is in a stack of about
10,000 cards).  When I try to find something like "XX.XX.XX" it takes about 5
minutes or more to search through all the cards and find something.  I have
tried searching for <3 character strings and the same thing happens.
	So, as I figure, Hypercard is taking the .'s and disregarding them as
characters to search for and replacing them as delimiters between multiple text
string (or something to that effect).

	My question basically is (are), 1) Why is hypercard doing this, and 2)
what can be done to get around this problem so that hypercard searchs as fast
as it does with >2 character strings?


	The reason that we use "."s in the fields is because we are naming cell
lines and that is the standard way of terming them.  Any help would be greatly
appreciated.

	- Matt Smith (Wash U. Med. School, St. Louis, MO)