this appears to have been coming from having an erroneous space in the current SET PATH.

>What is wrong where with my setup that is throwing this ubiquitous (read that as yet another instance of a VFP error message that is totally unhelpful in diagnosing the problem) when I issue a modi comm SomeNonExistentPRGNameHere in the command window the error pops up after hitting enter. If I modi comm and get a blank new window I can save it with the name.