Since you close the table shortly after creating it, it may not ever actually need to be written to disk. Just check for it's existence before deleting.

HTH!
Mark

>How can I flush memmory and force it to be written? If I used a full path for query1 would it be more likely to be written?

>>>query1 = sys(3)
>>>select * from collat.dbf into table (query1)
>>>USE (QUERY1) IN 0 ALIAS QUERY1
>>>QUERY = 'E'+SUBSTR(SYS(3),2,7)+'.DBF'
>>>SELECT QUERY1
>>>COPY TO (QUERY)
>>>USE (QUERY) IN 0 ALIAS QUERY
>>>SELECT QUERY
>>>USE IN QUERY1
>>>DELETE FILE(QUERY1) && File not found