Getting to a file easily/quickly in blender's file browser I have become used to the convenience of the following when searching for and opening a file in Windows (7)


Start typing the name of the file into an edit box and have files beginning with the same characters start showing up as a list underneath
Type part of the file name wrapped in asterisks (like *orange_tex*), press enter, and have the list of files filtered based on that wildcard.


But I find that Blender's file browsing page (the page you're on if your loading a texture into your scene, for example) is difficult to use if you're in a directory with a large number of files in it.  You kind of have to know the full name of the file or sort by file name alphabetically and scan visually for it.

So I am wondering if there is actually something built into this file browser that I'm not aware of that will make it easier to find a particular file quickly within a large list.   Does anyone know of such a thing?
Blender's file selector doesn't support this kind of filtering, but since you ask this question, here is some related functionality.


You can use Tab to auto-complete when typing a file name as you would in a shell..
You can also filter files by typing wildcards into the filename field *. followed by an extension eg foo*.blend, project*.*. When you press Enter, this will highlight all files with the extension in the current directory. (you can use A to clear the highlighting).
When opening files, you can use the filters available in the header to help narrow your search etc.. 




Search (Addon)

There is an addon that can further help you when searching for files called File Browser Search. It presents you with a list of results that matched your query.