Alias recognition anomaly

SA has some issues with alias recognition when DELETE is involved. Let's have the following table:

	Code:
	CREATE TABLE dbo.mytable (a INT PRIMARY KEY, b INT NOT NULL, c INT NULL)

The structure

	Code:
	<CLAUSE> FROM dbo.mytable AS m WHERE\|

behaves the way it should for both SELECT or UPDATE clauses. As soon as you press space, a popup appears that includes the alias m for mytable. Pressing 'm' filters the options and pressing '.' after rules out everything else but the aliased table and its columns.

It works with DELETE even if it is syntactically incorrect. I can get the code below by filtering with 'm', '.', 'a':

	Quote:
	DELETE FROM dbo.mytable AS m WHERE m.a = 1

Of course, this code won't compile.

But as soon as it is corrected by adding the alias 'm' to DELETE the alias recognition no longer works properly.

	Quote:
	DELETE m FROM dbo.mytable AS m WHERE\|

Pressing space does yield the popup with the alias and pressing 'm' filters but pressing '.' breaks something and the popup vanishes completely. Any idea what may possibly go wrong here?

Thank you for very detailed and thorough explanation, which is very helpful. Essentially what you have demonstrated here means that in

DELETE [alias]
FROM [table] AS [alias]
WHERE [alias]. [ not working correctly here]

the [alias] in the WHERE clause is not treated as an alias, but rather as a table name likely because that name is found first in the DELETE line and there appears no look-ahead check or that check is not working correctly. Since there is no actual table in the database named [alias], no column popup appears in the WHERE line after "[alias]."

Interesting to note that after the WHERE keyword (WHERE and nothing else after it) pressing space bar causes the correct column popup to appear on the screen with the correct alias referenced at the top of the list. Somehow after the alias + dot combination in the WHERE clause, it doesn't recognize it correctly anymore.

I have submitted a new bug report #SA0019836

Thank you very much.