Cry MySQL How to...

Rename a database table field

---

To rename a field in a MySQL database table use:

alter table table_name change old_field_name new_field_name field-spec

where:

table_name

is the name of the database table

old_field_name

is the name of the file to rename.

new_field_name

is the new name for the field once it has been renamed.

field-spec

is the definition for the field. This is required. This does mean that you can rename a field and change its type at the same time.

For example, if a table "accounts" has a field called "phone" which needs to be renamed to "telephone" (being a varchar 40 field) then this would be:

alter table accounts change phone telephone varchar(40)

The field-specification must always be included, as the original field definition is not carried forward. So do check that it is correct.

---

These notes have been tested against MySQL version 5.1, and may apply to other versions as well.