>>VFP always first looks for any file inside EXE/APP and only if it cannot be found, looks for it on the disk.
>
>Okay, it's good to know that this is the sequence rather than the other way around. Having concluded that, I must tell what I saw happening:
>
>The error message reported the table's name INCLUDING THE PATH. How could it know the path?! It must have been SPYING in the information about the OPEN tables, as available in memory. It would have been piece of cake for the programmer to conclude that it was okay to use the obviously somewhere included (and thus readonly) and already open table.

Most likely VFP internally uses DBF("TableX") so it can open the table again.

Oh well, we'll have to live with it. Problem is I cannot think of a simple workaround.

It should work if you create a cursor with name TableX instead of the table.

USE TableX IN 0 ALIAS Whatever
SELECT * FROM Whatever INTO CURSOR TableX NOFILTER
USE IN Whatever