I would suggest you look at the value returned from DBF().

Since 32 bit windows, Long File Names have been permitted. No great shakes unless there are embedded spaces in the path / file name(s).

I am postulating that the value returned from DBF looks something like:

C:\Program Files\Bruce\Data\contract.dbf

Notice the blank between 'Program' and 'Files'.

You can test for this and embed the string in quote marks to avoid the problem.