Sherlock, named after fictional detective Sherlock Holmes, was a file and web search tool created by Apple Inc. for the PowerPC-based "classic" Mac OS, introduced in 1998 with Mac OS 8.5 as an extension of the Mac OS Finder's file searching capabilities. Like its predecessor, Sherlock searched for local files and file contents on a Mac, using the same basic indexing code and search logic found in AppleSearch. Sherlock extended the system by enabling the user to search for items on the World Wide Web through a series of plug-ins, which employed existing web search engines. These plug-ins were written as plain text files, so that it was a simple task for a user to write a Sherlock plug-in.
