QuerySetCell on a column with a numeric name in ColdFusion

I'm attempting the use QuerySetCell to change value of a specific column in a query object, and have been receiving this error:

Column names must be valid variable names. They must start with a letter and can only include letters, numbers, and underscores.

The reason for this error, and the complication here, is that the columns I am trying to update have some integers as names, taken from a separate record's key/ID. For example, the query may contain three开发者_如何学运维 columns with names: "6638, 6639, 6640".

Now, I understand why this error is occurring (though not necessarily why CF has this limitation), however cannot come up with a work around. The further complications are that I cannot make any changes as to how the initial query set's column names, and need to preserve the column names and their order for when I convert the query to a JSON string and update my results table using the JSONified query.

Has anyone encountered this issue before, and if so how were you able to work around it, or were you forced to change how the columns were named in your initial query?

Using CF8 and have the ability to edit the JSONified query after it is returned from my Ajax handler if that makes a difference.

You can use bracket notation to set the values in a query (at least you can in CF9 - I do not have CF8 installed to test).

The sytax is pretty simple:

<cfset queryName[columnName][row] = "some new value" />

From your example, you could use this:

<cfset myQuery["6638"][1] = "moo" />

This will set the value of the '6638' column in the first row to 'moo'. If you have multiple rows being returned, you would need to set each row.