Fabio,

These selects work as expected:

create cursor x1 ( i1 i )
for i = 1 to 10
   insert into x1 values ( i )
endfor

select * from x1 into cursor x2 where recno() < 4
? _tally && 3

set deleted off

delete from x1 where i1 % 2 = 0

select * from x1 into cursor x2 where deleted()
? _tally && 5

select * from x1 into cursor x2 where ! deleted()
? _tally && 5

you must simply not send aliases as arguments to the functions.