I appreciate your response because I was flat out confused by this
action.  Let me respond to your first question;  I have never had this
happen before, nor have I had it happen since (even though it has not
been long since it did happen).  I have stilled used the SPOOLF command
(with caution) since the data loss, but the incident has not repeated
itself.  I did not see any error warning message, but I will state that I
was not exactly paying attention when the files disappeared, I was mainly
in a state of shock.  My printer was a serial printer and the files were
in a ready state for printing and the outfence of the printer was low
enough for the files to be printed during the night, I just ran out of
paper before they all printed.  I did leave the print queue empty because
the small and medium files were moved to a faster printer and large files
were just deferred, and then they disappeared.
 
I hope this answers all of your questions.  I don't really expect to have
an answer of where these files disappeared to.  I just wanted to pose the
questions to the majority of users who have more knowledge than I do, and
to see if there was a quick and dirty answer.  I will keep using the
SPOOLF command, under suspicion, and see if it ever happens again.
 
Thanks for your help and time.....
 
JoeE