Charles G Waldman <cgw(a)pgt.com&gt; writes: It would have been more convenient if your tried this with HOME != CWD, I think it is not adding your home directory here but just the CWD. See, no 'reactor' at all. I noticed something else If I read correctly if nm == "~/fubar" this sets newdir = HOME and "nm = /fubar". However, later on it does /* Effectively, let newdir be (expand-file-name newdir cwd). Because of the admonition against calling expand-file-name when we have pointers into lisp strings, we accomplish this indirectly by prepending newdir to nm if necessary, and using cwd (or the wd of newdir's drive) as the new newdir. */ [..] if (!IS_DIRECTORY_SEP (nm[0])) { char * tmp = alloca (strlen (newdir) + strlen (nm) + 2); file_name_as_directory (tmp, newdir); strcat (tmp, nm); nm = tmp; } newdir = alloca (MAXPATHLEN + 1); So it only copies the newdir in front if nm[0] != '/' (because you do want to have the default-directory in front of absolute names). After that it throws newdir away. However in our case the "/" is just there by accident So try making it if (!IS_DIRECTORY_SEP (nm[0]) || !collapse_newdir) { char * tmp = alloca (strlen (newdir) + strlen (nm) + 2); and removing the "&& collapse_newdir" later on. However I must be overseeing something is as this means setting HOME on NT has never worked and that I really cannot believe. Jan