Ramblings

Ramblings which occasionally resemble reality. This is the blog of Stewart Smith.

In what situation will this succeed:

ALTER TABLE t1 RENAME t2;

but this fail:

RENAME TABLE t1 TO t2;

Highlight the white text below for the answer:

When t1 is a temporary table.

Wow… I wonder why that is, I can’t think of any good reason…

Dmitry Lenev on 2008-12-11 at 11:15 pm said:

Hi Stewart!

Also when you have a non-temporary table and you are under LOCK TABLES.
Stefan on 2008-12-13 at 3:45 am said:

You cannot use RENAME to rename a TEMPORARY table. However, you can use ALTER TABLE instead:

mysql> ALTER TABLE orig_name RENAME new_name;

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/rename-table.html

For the reasons, ask the devs. But it’s documented. ;-)
MacPlusG3 on 2008-12-13 at 7:30 am said:

Oh it’s well documented, it’s just weird :)