Sql - Question on Cursors and variables

Question

I am trying to use a cursor to move create a column that has all parts equal to a field that was before it. In example

|  column1  |  column 2  |
|     1     |      a     |
|     2     |      b     |
|     3     |      c     |

would to go...

|  column1  |  column2  |  column3  |
|     1     |      a    |     b     |
|     2     |      b    |     c     |
|     3     |      c    |    NULL   |

So in order to do this I attempted using a cursor and an update statement based on the last fetch statement as below:

DECLARE myCursor1 CURSOR READ_ONLY
FOR
SELECT lname AS 'lnamerecoff'
FROM testingThis
ORDER BY lname

OPEN myCursor1
DECLARE @previous char(15)
DECLARE @new char(15)

SET @previous = FETCH NEXT FROM myCursor1

IF NOT EXISTS(SELECT * FROM sys.columns WHERE name = 'lnamerecoff' 
                       AND object_id = OBJECT_ID('testingThis'))
  ALTER TABLE testingThis ADD lnamerecoff int

WHILE @@FETCH_STATUS = 0
BEGIN 
SET @new = FETCH NEXT FROM myCursor1
UPDATE testingThis
SET lnamerecoff = @new
SET @previous = @new
END

This is throwing an syntax error near my fetch statement. Can anyone help me with this? Thanks!

Answer 1

It should be:

fetch next from myCursor1 into @previous