file name mappings

 I have a simple program that writes to two files. my file assignments look like this:

select optional reg assign to "REGFILE".
select optional peg assign to "UserFolder\PEGFILE".

I have an environment variable called dd_UserFolder which point to a valid directory.

When I run the program in VS2015 all is well. both files get written to the respective, however when I run the program outside of the environment using a cobol command prompt I get an error 9/198. Dialect is RM

Anyone experience this behavior as well?