What are valid table names in SQLite?

Question

Hi,

What are the combination of characters for a table name in SQLite to be valid? Are all combinations of alphanumerics (A-Z, a-z and 0-9) constitute a valid name?

Ex. CREATE TABLE 123abc(...);

What about a combination of alphanumerics with dashes "-" and periods ".", is that valid as well?

Ex. CREATE TABLE 123abc.txt(...);
Ex. CREATE TABLE 123abc-ABC.txt(...);

Thank you.

Answer 1

All of these are allowed, but you may have to quote them in [].

sqlite> CREATE TABLE [123abc](col);
sqlite> CREATE TABLE [123abc.txt](col);
sqlite> CREATE TABLE [123abc-ABC.txt](col);
sqlite> select tbl_name from sqlite_master;
123abc
123abc.txt
123abc-ABC.txt

In general, though, you should stick to the alphabet.

Answer 2

I haven't found a reference for it, but table names that are valid without using brackets around them should be any alphanumeric combination that doesn't start with a digit:

abc123 - valid
123abc - not valid
abc_123 - valid
_123abc - valid
abc-abc - not valid (looks like an expression)
abc.abc - not valid (looks like a database.table notation)

With brackets you should be able to use pretty much anything as a table name:

[This should-be a_valid.table+name!?]