Hello Fred.

>VFP opens another copy of the table during the SELECT. You'll never see it because you can't see what's happening while the SELECT is running.

Ok. then how come the following works:

use codet alias Report_Codet in 0

sele a.* ;
   from Report_Codet a ;
   into cursor cur_Temp

I aggree that sql 'opens' it's own table, BUT, i think it look first to see if the table refered to is already open and then decides on how and what to do. Maybe it just makes a memory copy of already open table. Also if i use a sql against a closed table, that previous closed table is now open after the sql command.