My $.02 worth:

1. Don't change FOPEN, except to honor the 'escaped characters'.

2. Provide an intrinsic that will take a filename string and return a
   correctly formatted string with special characters 'escaped'. Return
   the length, etc so that the s/w developer can easily take an entered
   filename and then make it a parm to any intrinsic that will honor
   the 'escaped characters'.

3. Don't let me configure the escape sentinel. I would hate to have to
   chase problems on other systems running my software because they
   changed the escape sentinel. Besides, I don't see it providing any
   real value.

4. Provide a CI function for #2.

5. Allow as much of MPE (sans posix) as possible to operate on escaped
   filename strings without breaking existing stuff.

duane percox