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>Who's going to fix this incredibly dangerous bug?
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I'd classify the vfp behaviour either as correct (considering the integration of tables as vfp "variables")
or a possible implementatation detail.
Consider: for your intended UC and coding style the correct vfp syntax would be:

update junk set d1 = d2 from DBF("Junk") junk inner join junk2 on junk.id = junk2.id

whereas in the examples you classifiy as "wrong" the alias Junk is taken from the vfp variable space,
similar to using any mdotted var in a SQL-Select just the way I' expect it to be used.

If you define an alias, use it resp. if you alias anything be sure to assign the correct source before <g>.
The SQLServ syntax might open up the door to enhancement problems if later on
a new table is added into the join list and
one of the previously in the join list reassigned but still used alias' is newly assigned.

Seen from that angle, I prefer the vfp implementation <g>.

regards

thomas