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roslaunch by default starts the nodes in the working directory ROS_HOME, which defaults to ~/.ros/, i. e. /home/user_name/.ros. You may specify the working directory to the directory of the exec by setting the cwd attribute of the node tag: http://wiki.ros.org/roslaunch/XML/node

Another workaround is to give your file operations a full path, as @Bill Smart suggested. You can also set the desired path to a ros parameter, read the ros parameter and operate on the thereby retrieved full path if you which to avoid hard coding the path.