Well I can't help, but I have to use (defun user-init-file () "Return the name of the user init file or nil." (let ((filename (format nil "~A/.swank.lisp" (namestring (truename (user-homedir-pathname)))))) (cond ((probe-file filename) filename) (t nil)))) here Just see what happens with logical-pathnames here (setf (logical-pathname-translations "tmp") '(("**;*.*.*" "/tmp/**/*.*"))) now (translate-logical-pathname "tmp:t1.txt") #p"/tmp/t1.txt" is fine but CL-USER> (translate-logical-pathname "tmp:.txt") Parse error in namestring: Expecting a file name, got #\.. tmp:.txt crashes. I can't tell why I have troubles with this dot but they still are there. my CMUCL here is: CL-USER> (lisp-implementation-type) "CMU Common Lisp" CL-USER> (lisp-implementation-version) "CVS release-18e-branch + minimal debian patches" CL-USER> Regards Friedrich