escaping functions in a select list?

We are migrating an 5.10 database to IDS2000. Unfortunately one of the tables in this database is called "user". At Informix 6, "user" became a function in a select list. So now our application fails when it issues SQL like: select user.* from user where ... Instead of a return of all columns in user, a single column with the app's login is returned. However, if we spell out each column it works. i.e. select user.user_phone, user.user_name, user... from user where ... It seems like we have a defect in that user.<column_id> is interpreted as a column while user.* is interpreted simply as the "user" function. Using an alias for user works around this problem, however, the application actually computes SQL dynamically from metadata about the schema. Altering the code to catch function keywords and substituting aliases in the select list, from list where clause, group clause and order clause get very complicated. Is there as a method to simply escape a function in the select list? Sorth like backslash in a shell command. i.e. select \\user.* from user ... -- Philip Walden 5301 Stevens Creek Blvd, MS 54L-GF Agilent Technologies Santa Clara, CA 95054 Engineering Services (408) 553-7745 FAX (408) 553-7659 mailto:phil_walden@agilent.com http://es.corporate.agilent.com/~pwalden