Will,
Stupid question, but why do you need a file presence? As mentioned by someone else, you can always make the cursor Read/Write if you need to modify it after the SQL SELECT. If you really need a file, then use INTO TABLE. Of course this has the disadvantage that you need to do the house keeping yourself.
HTH

>Daniel,
>
>This one is interesting - a real example of when it starts to happen...
>
>If the cursor wasn't readonly I could consider appending a load of records to it then deleting them
>
>Thanks
>
>Will
>
>>Will,
>>The NOFILTER clause prevents VFP from filtering the original table in case of a simple SELECT and creates a real cursor. However, it doesn't necessarily create a file on disk. If VFP has enough memory to handle the cursor in RAM, there won't be a physical file. This is the same behaviour as with cursors created with the CREATE CURSOR command.
>>Try running the following code:
>>

>>CREATE CURSOR test (mTest M)
>>
>>DO WHILE .t.
>>	INSERT INTO test VALUE(REPL("X", 65000))
>>	IF FILE(DBF())
>>		MESSAGEBOX("Now we've got a file on disk: " + DBF())
>>		EXIT
>>	ENDIF
>>ENDDO
>>

>>On my system with 128MB, VFP creates a file on disk after approx. 1400 records which corresponds to 85MB.
>>HTH