SQLite Query Language: SQLite Keywords

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# SQL As Understood By SQLite

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## SQLite Keywords

The SQL standard specifies a large number of keywords which may not be used as the names of tables, indices, columns, databases, user-defined functions, collations, virtual table modules, or any other named object. The list of keywords is so long that few people can remember them all. For most SQL code, your safest bet is to never use any English language word as the name of a user-defined object.

If you want to use a keyword as a name, you need to quote it. There are four ways of quoting keywords in SQLite:

> 'keyword' |  | A keyword in single quotes is a string literal.
> "keyword" |  | A keyword in double-quotes is an identifier.
> [keyword] |  | A keyword enclosed in square brackets is an identifier. This is not standard SQL. This quoting mechanism is used by MS Access and SQL Server and is included in SQLite for compatibility.
> `keyword` |  | A keyword enclosed in grave accents (ASCII code 96) is an identifier. This is not standard SQL. This quoting mechanism is used by MySQL and is included in SQLite for compatibility.

For resilience when confronted with historical SQL statements, SQLite will sometimes bend the quoting rules above:

- If a keyword in single quotes (ex: 'key' or 'glob') is used in a context where an identifier is allowed but where a string literal is not allowed, then the token is understood to be an identifier instead of a string literal.

- If a keyword in double quotes (ex: "key" or "glob") is used in a context where it cannot be resolved to an identifier but where a string literal is allowed, then the token is understood to be a string literal instead of an identifier.

Programmers are cautioned not to use the two exceptions described in the previous bullets. We emphasize that they exist only so that old and ill-formed SQL statements will run correctly. Future versions of SQLite might raise errors instead of accepting the malformed statements covered by the exceptions above.

SQLite adds new keywords from time to time when it takes on new features. So to prevent your code from being broken by future enhancements, you should normally quote any identifier that is an English language word, even if you do not have to.

The list below shows all possible keywords used by any build of SQLite regardless of compile-time options. Most reasonable configurations use most or all of these keywords, but some keywords may be omitted when SQL language features are disabled. Applications can use the sqlite3_keyword_count(), sqlite3_keyword_name(), and sqlite3_keyword_check() interfaces to determine the keywords recognized by SQLite at run-time. Regardless of the compile-time configuration, any identifier that is not on the following 140 element list is not a keyword to the SQL parser in SQLite:

1. ABORT
2. ACTION
3. ADD
4. AFTER
5. ALL
6. ALTER
7. ANALYZE
8. AND
9. AS
10. ASC
11. ATTACH
12. AUTOINCREMENT
13. BEFORE
14. BEGIN
15. BETWEEN
16. BY
17. CASCADE
18. CASE
19. CAST
20. CHECK
21. COLLATE
22. COLUMN
23. COMMIT
24. CONFLICT
25. CONSTRAINT
26. CREATE
27. CROSS
28. CURRENT
29. CURRENT_DATE
30. CURRENT_TIME
31. CURRENT_TIMESTAMP
32. DATABASE
33. DEFAULT
34. DEFERRABLE
35. DEFERRED
36. DELETE
37. DESC
38. DETACH
39. DISTINCT
40. DO
41. DROP
42. EACH
43. ELSE
44. END
45. ESCAPE
46. EXCEPT
47. EXCLUDE
48. EXCLUSIVE
49. EXISTS
50. EXPLAIN
51. FAIL
52. FILTER
53. FOLLOWING
54. FOR
55. FOREIGN
56. FROM
57. FULL
58. GLOB
59. GROUP
60. GROUPS
61. HAVING
62. IF
63. IGNORE
64. IMMEDIATE
65. IN
66. INDEX
67. INDEXED
68. INITIALLY
69. INNER
70. INSERT
71. INSTEAD
72. INTERSECT
73. INTO
74. IS
75. ISNULL
76. JOIN
77. KEY
78. LEFT
79. LIKE
80. LIMIT
81. MATCH
82. NATURAL
83. NO
84. NOT
85. NOTHING
86. NOTNULL
87. NULL
88. OF
89. OFFSET
90. ON
91. OR
92. ORDER
93. OTHERS
94. OUTER
95. OVER
96. PARTITION
97. PLAN
98. PRAGMA
99. PRECEDING
100. PRIMARY
101. QUERY
102. RAISE
103. RANGE
104. RECURSIVE
105. REFERENCES
106. REGEXP
107. REINDEX
108. RELEASE
109. RENAME
110. REPLACE
111. RESTRICT
112. RIGHT
113. ROLLBACK
114. ROW
115. ROWS
116. SAVEPOINT
117. SELECT
118. SET
119. TABLE
120. TEMP
121. TEMPORARY
122. THEN
123. TIES
124. TO
125. TRANSACTION
126. TRIGGER
127. UNBOUNDED
128. UNION
129. UNIQUE
130. UPDATE
131. USING
132. VACUUM
133. VALUES
134. VIEW
135. VIRTUAL
136. WHEN
137. WHERE
138. WINDOW
139. WITH
140. WITHOUT