I don't know if this helps. But here are my results. I am working vfp6:
I open a table in one foxpro instance with the use command. Then I lock it.
Then I try to open it, from the same foxpro instance, with fopen() (without a parameter for readonly access). It won't open, return value says the open failed.

Then, I launch a new instance of foxpro. I issue fopen() from the new instance. Foxpro successfully opens the file.

Would this help you in your case? You could read all the bytes into a temp table in the second instance of vfp, and evaluate the 'copied' file.



>Open vfp 8 in one session and set excl off and open any table and flock() it
>Open another copy of vfp 8
>Attempt to open the table in any manner you can. Gives attempting to lock message.
>
>I know the documentation says you can access it read only, but I think that is wrong. Any comments would really help Nerissa and me.