VFP will always look first in the EXE/APP regardless if path is specified or not. You can read about that in deatails at http://spacefold.com/lisa/post/Straight-Talk-about-Built-In-Files.aspx. However any program that is not included in the current EXE/APP wouldn't see files included in it. You can use EXECSCRIPT() because it creetes a temporary prg, compiles and executes it.

lcStr = EXECSCRIPT([RETURN FILETOSTR("] + lcFileName + [")])

>I have built a DLL application using VFP9 and ASP.
>The backend (VFP) returns HTML to be displayed by the from end. The HTML is saved in files on disk and we load the ones that we need for the page that is requested.
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>Recently we have the idea of including the HTML files in the project (in the DLL) so we can limit the number of disk requests in order to boost performance (we get 40-50 users at the same time). This worked well.
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>However, some of the templates are modified for certain customers and those files we kept them as disk files in a special location and using the same nameing convention as those loaded in the project. My problem is that when I want to load a file from the disk and I even specify the full path - what I get back is a copy of the file loaded in the project. I understand that is can be caused by using the same name for the file, but I was hoping I can still load files from disk.
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>I am using FILETOSTR and FOPEN - and no luck. Is there a way to force VFP to look into a disk location rather than the project files?