Identifiers
Applies to: Databricks SQL
Databricks Runtime 10.2 and above
An identifier is a string used to identify a object such as a table, view, schema, or column. Databricks has regular identifiers and delimited identifiers, which are enclosed within backticks. All identifiers are case-insensitive.
Syntax
Regular identifiers
{ letter | digit | '_' } [ ... ]
Note
In Databricks Runtime, if spark.sql.ansi.enabled
is set to true
, you cannot use an ANSI SQL reserved keyword as an identifier. For details, see ANSI Compliance.
Parameters
letter: Any letter from A-Z or a-z.
digit: Any numeral from 0 to 9.
c: Any character from the character set. Use
`
to escape special characters (for example,`.`
).
Examples
-- This CREATE TABLE fails because of the illegal identifier name a.b
CREATE TABLE test (a.b int);
no viable alternative at input 'CREATE TABLE test (a.'(line 1, pos 20)
-- This CREATE TABLE works
CREATE TABLE test (`a.b` int);
-- This CREATE TABLE fails because the special character ` is not escaped
CREATE TABLE test1 (`a`b` int);
no viable alternative at input 'CREATE TABLE test (`a`b`'(line 1, pos 23)
-- This CREATE TABLE works
CREATE TABLE test (`a``b` int);