Does capitalization matter in MySQL?

Question

I can't find a reference about which part of a MySQL query is case sensitive.

Is there an overview of where capitalization matters?

Specifically, are any of these case sensitive:

database name
table name
column name

Is it tied to the OS? Configurable? Or some other combination of factors?

What RDBMS you are using is also depends on that. Some of them don't care for case. — Smit, Dec 05 '12 at 23:37
Check out http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.5/en/identifier-case-sensitivity.html — drew010, Dec 05 '12 at 23:38

score 5 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 05 '12 at 23:38

In MySQL, databases correspond to directories within the data directory. Each table within a database corresponds to at least one file within the database directory (and possibly more, depending on the storage engine). Consequently, the case sensitivity of the underlying operating system plays a part in the case sensitivity of database and table names. This means database and table names are not case sensitive in Windows, and case sensitive in most varieties of Unix.

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The lower_case_table_names system variable also affects how the server handles identifier case sensitivity

You can read more about the topic here.

Which again proves that MySQL sucks. Why would you want to depend on the file system for the case-sensitivity of the table names? +1 for the answer, though. — GolezTrol, Dec 05 '12 at 23:46

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 05 '12 at 23:39

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It depends on the collation. For example if your table has unicode_general_ci, it'll support general unicode character recognizing algorithm and it'll be case-*in*sensitive.

answered Dec 05 '12 at 23:39

Shiplu Mokaddim

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He is asking about case sensitivity of table and column names, not about the case sensitivity of the data in the tables (which indeed depends on collation). – Stijn de Witt Jun 14 '16 at 18:45

Does capitalization matter in MySQL?

2 Answers2