Since no one at L-SOFT has ventured to define NEAR for me, will this do?
Unless I get something truly authoratative I'm going to go with it.  Yes,
Ben, I have looked at Jared's web tutorial, more than once, and before you
suggested it, but it has errors of its own and is list centric, and the
database memo does not define some key terms/operands, is misleading in
areas, etc.  and is just too much for someone who is not already familiar
with the routine.  And I still don't like it that the implicit was changed
from AND to NEAR.  So I am writing my own comprehensive, list centric,
item and is this an accurate description of the NEAR operand?

 ----
For LISTSERV to consider two "words" to be NEAR they must be within a
line of each other, with no more than five intervening "words."
"Word" and "line" order are immaterial, but note that "line" is as
defined by LISTSERV and may not match what you mean by "line" and
"word" is as defined elsewhere in this document.
 (definition of "word" not included here)
  ----

I would totally leave out mention of the NEAR comparative had it not been
made the implicit over the AND operand.


Douglas