Hello Wayne, I sympathise with your problem, but please understand you are not making it easy for us when you give us incoherent information.
You tell us to "try this" and give a folder structure: Folder1 track1.py data1.txt data2.txt data3.txt Folder2 track1.py dset1.txt dset2.txt ... dset8.txt but then when you send a copy of the actual code you are running, it is called "ReportingToolAwww.py" and it is 417 lines long. What happened to track1.py? What is in that? Does track1.py reproduce the fault? There are five possible faults: 1 A problem in your Python code. 2 A serious bug in Python itself. 3 A serious bug in Windows file system. 4 Disk corruption making Windows confused. 5 A PEBCAK problem. I can confirm that ReportingToolAwww.py doesn't seem to contain any "funny" path manipulations that would cause the problem: it simply calls open on relative path names, which will open files in the current directory. The problem does NOT appear to be in your Python code. A serious bug in either Python or Windows is very unlikely. Not impossible, but unless somebody else reports that they too have seen the fault, we can dismiss them. Disk corruption is possible. If all else fails, you can run the Windows disk utility to see if it finds anything. But the most likely cause of the fault is that you aren't running what you think you are running. When you say: "If I've created a shortcut, it wasn't by design. Ctrl-c to ctrl-v most likely." "Most likely"? Meaning you're not sure? Given that you are talking about the Properties window talking about "pointing to" things, I think it is very likely that in fact you have created a shortcut, or a symlink, and when you think you are running a copy in Folder2 you are actually running a shortcut to Folder1. That would *exactly* explain the problem you are experiencing. Please take a screenshot of the Properties window showing the "pointing to" stuff. I think you will find that track1.py in Folder2 is a shortcut back to track1.py in Folder1. (For the record, Windows does in fact have symlinks, as well as hard links and a third type of link called junction points. They are undersupported by Explorer, and so people hardly every use them. Most people don't even know they exist, even though some of them go back all the way to Windows NT. But as far as I can tell, there is no way for you to have created a symlink from Explorer.) -- Steven D'Aprano _______________________________________________ Tutor maillist - Tutor@python.org To unsubscribe or change subscription options: http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/tutor