Rename a table in MySQL

Anil Olakkal picture Anil Olakkal · Sep 29, 2012 · Viewed 392.3k times · Source

Renaming a table is not working in MySQL

RENAME TABLE group TO member;

The error message is

#1064 - You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds
        to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near 'group 
        RENAME TO member' at line 1

The query is working fine on other tables for me, but not with the table group.

Answer

Joachim Isaksson picture Joachim Isaksson · Sep 29, 2012

group is a keyword (part of GROUP BY) in MySQL, you need to surround it with backticks to show MySQL that you want it interpreted as a table name:

RENAME TABLE `group` TO `member`;

added(see comments)- Those are not single quotes.