Ok,

it would appear that linux has a problem with finding files based on a path.

ok heres the part of code that matters

  spell = load_datafile("spell.dat");
  if(!spell)
   {
      file_select("load spell.dat", filename, "dat");
      spell = load_datafile(filename);
      if(!spell){no_dat=0;}else{no_dat=1;}
   }
  }

And when the program runs, the spell.dat is in the same folder as the exe and it dosen't find it and I enter the if(!spell) statement, loading spell from the file_select at runtime it is able load spell.dat

So whats the prob??

Thankss

Check the path parameter. That's not a path you pass here. Try "./" instead.
Also use file_select_ex().
Make sure that you pass bothe upper and lower case extension "dat;DAT" just to make sure.

Right, so your filemanager is in that directory. Try running the program from the command-line (many things work naturally from a terminal in Linux, so it's probably good to get used to those too).

Amd make absolutely sure the case of the filename is the same in either case - Linux is case sensitive.

use allgros functions to get the path of the executable.
Then use that path to prefix your file paths.

The file manager (apparently) starts the program with the working directory set to your home directory. You should probably make the program so that it doesn't care from what directory it is started, as spellcaster suggested.

You could probably do (untested!) chdir(get_filename_path(argv[0])); from main, though that isn't exactly nice.
The other option would be to store the path information in the game config file and read it when the game starts (put configfiles in the directory pointed to by $HOME; use the C function getenv to get it's value).

I think the function you really need is getcwd(); which returns the current working directory.. argv[0] is the application name and does not always contain the path.

Oooh it's not ANSI/POSIX compliant... but I know it works in Windows/DOS/Linux... what do they exactly mean by that anyway.