Question

Does anybody know what is wrong in this MYSQL 5.0 syntax?

CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS target (
  _id int(11) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
  time timestamp NOT NULL DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP,
  map_id int(11) DEFAULT NULL,
  left int(11) DEFAULT NULL,
  top int(11) DEFAULT NULL,
  status tinyint(1) NOT NULL,
  temperature int(11) DEFAULT NULL,
  humidity float DEFAULT NULL,
  lum int(11) DEFAULT NULL,
  PRIMARY KEY (_id),
  FOREIGN KEY (map_id) REFERENCES map(id) ON DELETE CASCADE
)

I’ll show you the error:

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 ‘left INTEGER DEFAULT NULL,
top INTEGER DEFAULT NULL,
status tinyint(1) NOT’ at line 5

Answer 1

Because left is a MySQL 5.0 reserved word. Also, even though you can escape the field name, it’s never a great idea to use reserved words in a table definition.