Can't read text from file on OS 9

[Cubist at aol.com]

sez ambassador at fourthworld.com:
>Trevor DeVore wrote:
>> I have a weird problem here.  I built a standalone for OS 9 using 2.5.
>> I'm testing under Classic but a client is testing on a machine running
>> OS 9.
>> In the code I use put URL ("file:"&pPath) into tMyVar to get text from
>> a file.  The path is one retrieved from the answer file command.  On OS
>> X and Windows the text is retrieved without a problem.  Not so on OS 9.
>> I just get empty.  I also tried open file, read from file and close file
>> but that doesn't work either.  No errors are reported, just not data
>> from the file.
>> Can anyone else confirm whether this is happening on their end?
>If you're running in OS 9 natively I'm stumped.  But if you're running
>Classic under OS X this is caused by paths being handled differently in
>OS 9 and Classic.
>You could account for this if it was possible to know if you're running
>9 natively or in Classic, but alas it is not.
   Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't there a function that gives you the 
pathname of the topStack? If there is, it seems to me that you should be able to 
get that pathname, and from it, determine exactly how the current OS takes 
care of such things. Yes, this is an annoyance, but you should only need to do it 
once, during (pre)openStack... right?