But how come USE works on it despite no physical presence. I would have expected it not to. In VFP5, the file existed. The behaviour change since VFP5 is forcing me to rewrite code which is part of my framework. I would rather avoid all the testing that will require.

>If it's a cursor it may not have a physical presence on the disk.
>
>>Yes. I looked for that file and it is not on the drive. I used VFP's FILE() to confirm that file did not exist. That being the case, how come I can USE it?
>>
>>>You're using cursor or table that is open with alias 'temp'. ? DBF("temp") should tell you the file name of it.
>>>
>>>>Can someone tell me why this is so?
>>>>
>>>>SELECT * FROM somefile INTO CURSOR temp
>>>>*VFP says the file does not exist. It is also not visible in the explorer.
>>>>WAIT WINDOW (FILE(DBF("temp"))) && RETURNS .F.
>>>>*But I can USE it
>>>>USE DBF("temp") AGAIN IN 0 ALIAS test EXCLUSIVE && works in VFP 7 and 8!
>>>>
>>>>just Curious
>>>>Charles Richard