Hi Bob:
Thanks for thinking about this. Yes, ls ./* gets a listing of files, though actually this lists all files and also lists files of sub directories too, but I think that's normal behavior. Ie: the * includes all files, and also applies ls to *.
Anyhow, I too am very surprised, and understand your testing quandry. My current plan is to break out a test version MCW_file_expand() and create a wrapper main(), and see if I can debug it. We'll see how far I get on that, and I'll report back.
If you have some specific ideas as to what to look at in particular, I'm interested.
Graham