>In addition to Als remarks - and perhaps aiming at similar problem, which alias for vfp table function -
>recno() is unreliable on joins.
>
>If recno("kartei") is needed, filter in first step to temp cursor, do inner join in discrete step.

Any function which requires an alias can be used without it in a single table query. If it's used with an alias, it takes its values from that alias outside of the query; inside the query the aliases are unknown (perhaps if specified in "from mytable alias qq", then SomeAliasFunc("qq") may work, didn't try). Generally, we all learned, the hard way, not to use such functions in multi-source queries.