>
>Getting back to my orig quest, is there a way for getfile() to show only files of my choice beginning with a prefix like 020*.dbf rather than all dbfs()?

No, but as Caroline said, you could also use LOCFILE(). It will throw an error if the user presses cancel, so you have to trap for it:

local lcOldError, llCancel, lcFileName
lcOldError = on("error")
llCancel = .f.
on error llCancel = .t.
lcFileName = locFile("020*.dbf")
on error &lcOldError
if !llCancel
    * user selected a file...do your stuff
else
    * user hit cancel
endif