Altering a table column using change

Question

Altering a table column using change is not working but using modify the same query statement works fine.

With change it fails:

alter table users change name varchar(100);

Error Code: 1064 . You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near 'varchar(100)' at line 1 0.000 sec

With Modify it works.

alter table users modify name varchar(100);

Answer 1

If you use CHANGE then you have to specify a new name for the column, so the following should work:

alter table users change name newname varchar(100);

Look at the alter specification for CHANGE : http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/alter-table.html

Answer 2

The syntax for CHANGE is different than MODIFY . From the documentation :

CHANGE [COLUMN] old_col_name new_col_name column_definition

So, in your case, you should use:

alter table users change name name varchar(100);