fastest way to get raw hit count

[zzzzz shalev]

hi all,
   
  is there a faster way to retrieve ONLY the count of results for a query?
   
  lucene ranks (scores) the first batch of docs and sorts them by rank, this is 
functionality i dont need in certain queries and i assume, not doing this can 
return the count faster then the hits.length()
   
  any ideas???
   
  thanks,,,

                
---------------------------------
New Yahoo! Messenger with Voice. Call regular phones from your PC and save big.