Re: Column name 'user' not allowed?

On Thu, 2004-07-08 at 09:35, Stephan Szabo wrote:
> On Thu, 8 Jul 2004, Alberto Cabello Sanchez wrote:
> > On Wed, Jul 07, 2004 at 05:17:08PM -0400, Bill Moran wrote:
> > > Thomas Mueller <news-exp-dec04@tmueller.com> wrote:
> > > > now I can create the table! I don't see a reason why column name USER
> > > > isn't allowed?!
> > >
> > > Because it's a reserved word in PostgreSQL's SQL syntax.
> > >
> > > You can also work around this by enclosing the name in quotes.  This also
> > > makes the column name case-sensitive though, so you need to be sure that
> > > _all_ processes/code/whatever that accesses this table can properly address
> > > the column with the proper case.  i.e. if you use "USER" and later try to
> > > SELECT user FROM poc_user_account, you'll get an error that the column
> > > doesn't exist.
> >
> > Even worse, you don't get an error at all, but you get your current connection
> > username:
> >
> > alberto=# select user from pg_database;
> >  current_user
> > --------------
> >  alberto
> >  alberto
> >  alberto
> > (3 rows)
>
> Right, because USER effectively means CURRENT_USER (as per the rules in
> SQL92 6.2/SQL99 6.3). The choice of having USER be a reserved word which
> basically means the same thing as CURRENT_USER by the committee doing the
> SQL spec was unfortunate.
>

That said, the choice of USER as a column name in phpopenchat is even
more unfortunate. Someone should open a bug report with them and site
the sql spec so that they change the column to a friendlier (and more
compliant) name.

Robert Treat
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