Hi Everyone I have a message file defined as follows FILE: CTRIN.CTR.DKA FILE CODE : 0 FOPTIONS: ASCII,VARIABLE,NOCCTL,MSG BLK FACTOR: 1 CREATOR : ** REC SIZE: 300(BYTES) LOCKWORD: ** BLK SIZE: 310(BYTES) SECURITY--READ : ANY EXT SIZE: 258(SECT) WRITE : ANY NUM REC: 0 APPEND : ANY NUM SEC: 1264 LOCK : ANY NUM EXT: 5 EXECUTE : ANY MAX REC: 1031 **SECURITY IS ON FLAGS : NO ACCESSORS NUM LABELS: 0 CREATED : THU, FEB 17, 2000, 11:14 AM MAX LABELS: 0 MODIFIED: MON, MAR 13, 2000, 2:34 PM DISC DEV #: 1 ACCESSED: MON, MAR 13, 2000, 2:35 PM SEC OFFSET: 0 LABEL ADDR: ** VOLCLASS : MPEXL_SYSTEM_VOLUME_SET:DISC I have a C (posix) program waiting on a FREAD on this file. LISTF,2 reports a non zero EOF when I know it is empty. If I run SH.HPBIN.SYS and examine the file using ls then the size is zero bytes (correct !) Then (bizarrely) if exit SH and redo LISTF,2 the EOF is 0 (correct !) I am running MPE 5.5. Any Ideas ? Chris