What are valid table names in SQLite?

Question

What are the combination of characters for a table name in SQLite to be valid? Are all combinations of alphanumerics (A-Z, a-z and 0-9) constitute a valid name?

Ex. CREATE TABLE 123abc(...);

What about a combination of alphanumerics with dashes "-" and periods ".", is that valid as well?

Ex. CREATE TABLE 123abc.txt(...);
Ex. CREATE TABLE 123abc-ABC.txt(...);

Thank you.

Answer 1

I haven't found a reference for it, but table names that are valid without using brackets around them should be any alphanumeric combination that doesn't start with a digit:

abc123 - valid
123abc - not valid
abc_123 - valid
_123abc - valid
abc-abc - not valid (looks like an expression)
abc.abc - not valid (looks like a database.table notation)

With brackets you should be able to use pretty much anything as a table name:

[This should-be a_valid.table+name!?]

Answer 2

All of these are allowed, but you may have to quote them in "".

sqlite> CREATE TABLE "123abc"(col);
sqlite> CREATE TABLE "123abc.txt"(col);
sqlite> CREATE TABLE "123abc-ABC.txt"(col);
sqlite> select tbl_name from sqlite_master;
123abc
123abc.txt
123abc-ABC.txt

In general, though, you should stick to the alphabet.

Answer 3

Per Clemens on the sqlite-users mailing list:

Everything is allowed, except names beginning with "sqlite_".

CREATE TABLE "TABLE"("#!@""'☺\", "");

You can use keywords ("TABLE"), special characters (""#!@""'☺\"), and even the empty string ("").

Answer 4

From SQLite documentation on CREATE TABLE, the only names forbidden are those that begin with sqlite_ :

Table names that begin with "sqlite_" are reserved for internal use. It is an error to attempt to create a table with a name that starts with "sqlite_".