A character string containing the expanded file specification or the field you specify. If you do not provide a complete file specification for the filespec argument, the F$PARSE function supplies defaults in the return string. In most cases, the F$PARSE function returns a null string ("") if an error is detected during the parse. For example, a null string is returned if the file specification has incorrect syntax or if a disk or directory does not exist, making the file specification logically incorrect. However, when you specify a field name or the SYNTAX_ONLY parse type, F$PARSE returns the appropriate information.