>Well, try my code! Feel free to change the paths according to your setup. In this case p: is my default drive, and the path includes p:\data\

>STRTOFILE('aaa','p:\data\xyz.xyz')
>?FILE('p:\xyz.xyz') &&.T. which is WRONG
>?FILE('p:\data\xyz.xyz') && .T. which is correct
>?adir(dummy,'p:\xyz.xyz')>0 && .F. which is correct
>?adir(dummy,'p:\data\xyz.xyz')>0 && .T. which is correct
>

I ran your code (modified for my path) and got the expected results:

STRTOFILE('aaa','c:\temp\dir1\xyz.xyz')
?FILE('c:\xyz.xyz') &&.F. which is correct
?FILE('c:\temp\dir1\xyz.xyz') && .T. which is correct

>NB! I have no p:\xyz.xyz file!

I don't mean to question your results, but at the risk of asking the obvious, are you certain there is no p:\xyz.xyz? Not a hidden file or anything like that?