How do I add a new column with an apostrophe in the name?

Question

I am trying to alter a table by adding a new column. New column name = today's date. I don't know how to code the apostrophe.

Trying ALTER TABLE tblname ADD today's date DATETIME

Answer 1

0

OK @Usman has shown you how to do it and @Magnus has explained the dangers in doing so, but I have to ask why you would want to store a value of today's date in a column? That does smell like a bad design.

What happens when I read the data entered yesterday, tomorrow?

Even if the table only ever contains "today's" data, name the column with something that reflects what the date means (e.g. EnteredDate, InsertedDate, LogDate, etc) - then you can see easily if the data has been refreshed.

If the data never can go stale, and is always "today's" then no need to store a date at all select cast(getdate() as date) will do.

answered Apr 18 '12 at 07:11 AM

Kev Riley ♦♦
46.1k ● 39 ● 43 ● 69

Absolutely great advice.

Apr 18 '12 at 08:55 AM Grant Fritchey ♦♦

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Answer 2

0

There are couple of ways you can do this, but I prefer not to use spaces,single quotes etc. in the object names

Anyways, one way to do it is to put square brackets around the column name i.e.

ALTER TABLE tblname ADD [today's date] DATETIME

Another way is to have QUOTED_IDENTIFIER setting ON and double quote the column name i.e.

SET QUOTED_IDENTIFIER ON;
ALTER TABLE tblname ADD "today's date" DATETIME

answered Apr 18 '12 at 04:31 AM

Usman Butt
13.8k ● 6 ● 8 ● 14

I totally agree about not using single quotes or apostrophes in object names.

create table magnus.test (id int identity(1,1) primary key)
alter table magnus.test
add [today's date] datetime
alter table magnus.test
add [today´s date] datetime
alter table magnus.test
add [today`s date] datetime

The above is just one of the many reasons to avoid it :)

Apr 18 '12 at 05:46 AM Magnus Ahlkvist

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How do I add a new column with an apostrophe in the name?

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