Yeah, I follow you, Shawn. For this instance, Howard's answer is more expedient (less I'll have to change in the rest of the script), but I will implement your change in the future.

It ends up reading like this (no change to catcherror):

open(1,"c:\lotus\notes\notes.ini",0)
if @error = 0
close(1)
$notesini = "c:\lotus\notes\notes.ini"
else
open(1,"c:\notes\notes.ini",0)
catcherror("Could not find your notes.ini file.")
close(1)
$notesini = "c:\notes\notes.ini"
endif