problem solved.

What I'm doing is creating a generic "file opening" function which creates a string along the lines above.

the solution was to break the string in two

USTRING= (GLOBOBJECT.cDataPath)+'\'+FNAME
tells the system what to open

and
instring=WKAREA+' ORDER '+NDEX+' '+UPDOWN+' '+XCLU+' ALIAS '+TRIM(ALS)+' AGAIN'

tells the system how to open it

I was trying to do it all in one string, which gave me the problems mentioned.

However the two string approach works everytime. The syntax is:


USE (USTRING) IN &INSTRING

Thanks for your interest