I have seen this also.  A COBOL program creates an output file, saved in
the permanent domain.  The program completes, :listf does *not* show the
file in one case, yet you can "print" it - shortly thereafter things are
back in sync again.  Another case :listf showed EOF of zero (after file
was closed) but :print also worked; again everything back in sync after
a period of time.
 
There is (or at least was) some poltergeist in the file close/directory
routines that tends to "hide" new files.  I never tracked it down because
each occurrance was always easy to write away as a "fluke".
 
Jeff Kell <[log in to unmask]>