Could you not use the low-level file functions to change one of the offending fieldnames in the table's header?

>Yes, I have two fields having the same name in my table and here is why.
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>From the mainframe, someone is running an extraction program which will extract some data to a DBF format. On the mainframe, they have those long field names having more than 25 characters. Some of them have the same first 15 characters. The extraction work but when I use this table in Visual FoxPro I have two fields having the same name.
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>Now, the problem is how to make reference to the first field or the second field?
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>If I use the table and just say ? first_field, Visual FoxPro will show me the value of the second field and sometimes it's the first field.
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>We have another extraction program at the Visual FoxPro level and we need to find a mecanism to make reference to one of those field.