Naming Conventions

A standard identifier name must begin with a letter or an underscore character, and may contain any number of alphanumeric characters or underscores. No other characters can be used. There is no enforced upper limit on the length of an identifier name. Names can be as long as you like, but don't make them so long that you dread having to type them in full each time.

Square brackets or double quotes can be used to indicate a non-standard identifier name to the SQLite parser. Identifier names enclosed in this way can include characters other than the underscore, including spaces and even other square brackets, and this also allows you to use SQL keywords as identifiers.

Note

It is not generally a good idea to use non-standard identifier names in your database; although, square brackets can still be used around standard identifier names without consequence if you are familiar with this syntax from SQL Server or Microsoft Access.

Reserved Keywords

Tables C.1 through C.3 list the reserved keywords in SQLite. Table C.1 shows the fallback keywords, which can be used as identifiers without being delimited.

Table C.1. Fallback Keywords in SQLite

ABORT	AFTER	ASC	ATTACH	BEFORE
BEGIN	DEFERRED	CASCADE	CLUSTER	CONFLICT
COPY	CROSS	DATABASE	DELIMITERS	DESC
DETACH	EACH	END	EXPLAIN	FAIL
FOR	FULL	IGNORE	IMMEDIATE	INITIALLY
INNER	INSTEAD	KEY	LEFT	MATCH
NATURAL	OF	OFFSET	OUTER	PRAGMA
RAISE	REPLACE	RESTRICT	RIGHT	ROW
STATEMENT	TEMP	TEMPORARY	TRIGGER	VACUUM
VIEW

Table C.3. System Object Names in SQLite

_ROWID_	MAIN	OID	ROWID	SQLITE_MASTER
SQLITE_TEMP_MASTER

Table C.2 shows the normal keywords, which can only be used as identifier names if they are contained in square brackets or double quotes.

Table C.2. Normal Keywords in SQLite

ALL	AND	AS	BETWEEN	BY
CASE	CHECK	COLLATE	COMMIT	CONSTRAINT
CREATE	DEFAULT	DEFERRABLE	DELETE	DISTINCT
DROP	ELSE	EXCEPT	FOREIGN	FROM
GLOB	GROUP	HAVING	IN	INDEX
INSERT	INTERSECT	INTO	IS	ISNULL
JOIN	LIKE	LIMIT	NOT	NOTNULL
NULL	ON	OR	ORDER	PRIMARY
REFERENCES	ROLLBACK	SELECT	SET	TABLE
THEN	TRANSACTION	UNION	UNIQUE	UPDATE
USING	VALUES	WHEN	WHERE

Table C.3 shows the names of some system objects in SQLite that can only be used as an identifier name for a different type of object.