Abstract: A system for finding and reading a bar code, arbitrarily located on a document, working from an electronic image of the document represented by a pixel array such as generated by a document scanner. A one-dimensional texture analysis is performed in the scanning direction by defining a pattern of test segments and searching for characteristic ranges of transistions within those test segments. If a horizontal test segment pattern fails to locate a bar code region, a test segment pattern skewed with respect to the horizontal is applied. If test patterns skewed with respect to the horizontal fail to locate a bar code region, then a state-transition analysis is applied in the direction perpendicular to the scan direction and in directions skewed with respect to that perpendicular to search for a terminal symbol characterizing the bar code.