>I figured it would be. What would happen if I already had another DEAL table open? Would I get an error?

You mean if you had two different tables open with the same name, but from different directories? I really don't know, but that sounds like a nightmare to me. :-) Anyway, that's one of the reasons why I suggested to add CLOSE DATABASES ALL in the beginning of the program, to make sure that you really know that no "ghost" tables are open.