Zach Beane has pointed out to me that cmucl doesn't merge the pathname with *default-pathname-defaults* as required in CLHS 19.2.3. In particular, OPEN, ENSURE-DIRECTORIES-EXIST, FILE-AUTHOR, and DELETE-FILE don't merge. This is now fixed in cvs. I'm too lazy to make a patch for 20a for this (if you really want one, speak up!) so I offer the following fix for this issue. (/fwrappers:define-fwrapper/ force-merge-pathname (filename &rest options) (setf <http://www.lispworks.com/reference/HyperSpec/Body/a_setf.htm> filename (merge-pathnames <http://www.lispworks.com/reference/HyperSpec/Body/f_merge_.htm> filename)) (fwrappers::call-next-function)) (fwrappers:fwrap 'open <http://www.lispworks.com/reference/HyperSpec/Body/f_open.htm> #'force-merge-pathname) (fwrappers:fwrap 'ensure-directories-exist <http://www.lispworks.com/reference/HyperSpec/Body/f_ensu_1.htm> #'force-merge-pathname) (fwrappers:fwrap 'file-author #'force-merge-pathname) (fwrappers:fwrap 'delete-file #'force-merge-pathname) (This is pretty neat. I've never used fwrappers before, even though they've been there for years now.) Ray