I've recently transferred several Jet ("Access") databases to MySQL. I'm cleaning up the tables and have run into a problem. Some of the tables have columns named update and delete. Unfortunately with those names being SQL keywords, I get SQL syntax errors when I try to do anything with those columns.

I've looked throught the MySQL Reference Manual and Googled, but haven't found anything that seems to address my issue. I'm not sure I'm providing Google with very good search phrases either. All I really want to do is drop the update and delete columns from the table. Any pointers appreciated!

TIA

Hi

You can use ` characters to use reserved words as column names:

ALTER TABLE theTable DROP `update`

I don't know about MySQL, but in Microsoft SQL and Access, surrounding the column names with square brackets (e.g. select [update], [delete] from myTable) would work.

Reserved words need to be escaped. In MS SQL it is indeed [word], but in MySQL it's the back tick `word`.

Some documentation for you;

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/identifiers.html

The search term you where after is "mysql escape reserved word". But it seems people have beaten me to it.

Thanks Guttorm and redgoblin, the back ticks were the trick.