Hi,

>Is this SQL command returns the deleted status of one record from file a?

That's one of the side effects of how VFP processes SELECT statements. When you run a SELECT query, VFP doesn't operate on the tables you specify. Instead VFP opens them again using a random alias. After that VFP replaces all occurrences of the alias in your SELECT statement with the random alias choosen for the table:

SELECT _s89334jj8.field1, _j83jd032d.field1,  s89334jj8.field2, _j83jd032d.field4, deleted('a') ;
  FROM s89334jj8, _j83jd032d ;
 WHERE  s89334jj8.field1 = _j83jd032d.field1

When you pass the name of an alias to a function, VFP doesn't recognize this string as an alias and fails to translate it. Therefore DELETED() accesses table a, whereas the reminder of the SELECT statement uses a copy of table a with the alias _j83jd032d. You can actually see that VFP opens multiple tables:

Dimension la[1]
Select AUsed(la) from Sys(2005)
Display Memory like la