mysql column names

[roneill]

Could someone offer me a solution to this problem ??

MySQL offer the facility to use chars such as & - + etc in column names, but when parsed as part of a query string php does not like them.

e.g.

"SELECT this-name&+2 FROM table name";

Will produce an error.

I know that I could use back ticks, but is there any other way I could manipulate the string to parse the special characters in the column names?

The reason I need to do this is because my column names are dynamically generated and putting back quotes around each column name will be alot of hasstle and slow down my code:

Thanks in advance

Ryan

[steadyguy]

Unfortunately, backticks are pretty much your only solution as the problem is not with PHP, but the database. Also, though it may require a bit of effort to add the backticks to the column creation script, it is unlikely to make your script noticably slower, if it has any effects at all. Another option would be to just use normal characters in the column names. If unique names are an issue, md5() or uniqid() are made for that sort of thing.

[roneill]

Thank you very much.

I thought that would be the answer, but is nice to have it confirmed.

Ryan

[superwormy]

Out of sheer curiosity... why are you using randomly generated column names?

Just curios...

I can only think that you'd want to do this if you had to always add and drop columns... but thats a horrible way to utilize a database...

[roneill]

I am not producing randomly generated column names. I am just generating the query string dynamically and not explicitly.

Ryan

[superwormy]

Edit sorry! Why are you doing this: 'column names are dynamically generated'?