Re: BUG #5620: PostgreSQL won't accept the word "user" as a valid column name

On 08/14/2010 02:14 AM, Samuel Marinov wrote:
>
> The following bug has been logged online:
>
> Bug reference: 5620
> Logged by: Samuel Marinov
> Email address: samuel(dot)marinov(at)gmail(dot)com
> PostgreSQL version: 9.0b4
> Operating system: Ubuntu Linux 10.04 64-bit
> Description: PostgreSQL won't accept the word "user" as a valid
> column name
> Details:
>
> I haven't tried this bug with any other platform or version. I installed
> PostgreSQL from source, using the configure command: "./configure
> --prefix=/usr/local/pgsql". I also started the server after the install with
> the following command: "/usr/local/pgsql/bin/pg_ctl start -D
> /usr/local/pgsql/data" while logged in as a non-root user. Also, I didn't
> try creating a test database and user as the INSTALL file says, but creating
> databases and users works fine anyway. Other than that, I used all the
> defaults found in the INSTALL file for installing and starting PostgreSQL.
> After that, I set a password for the postgres user (not the system postgres
> user, but the database user) and created another user called ftp. I also
> gave the ftp user full ownership to a database named ftp. Then, I logged in
> as the ftp user, and tried to run the following query: "create table ftp
> (user varchar, password varchar);". I got the following error message:
>
> ERROR: syntax error at or near "user" at character 19
> STATEMENT: create table ftp (user varchar, password varchar);
> ERROR: syntax error at or near "user"
> LINE 1: create table ftp (user varchar, password varchar);
>
> I tried using the name "username" for the first column, and it worked
> perfectly.

not sure why you consider this a bug - but "user" is a reserved word in
PostgreSQL and the SQL-Standard (see
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.0/static/sql-keywords-appendix.html) so
you would have to quote the keyword like:

create table ftp ("user" varchar, password varchar);

in your code - but I would advise against using reserved words at all
because you will end up having to quote them all over the place in each
and every query.

Stefan