reserved_keywords option

Changes one or more keywords into reserved keywords.

Allowed values

String

Default

Empty string

Scope

	PUBLIC role	For current user	For other users
Allowed to set permanently?	Yes, with SET ANY SYSTEM OPTION	No	No
Allowed to set temporarily?	Yes, with SET ANY SYSTEM OPTION	No	No

Remarks

This option creates reserved keywords from specified keywords. Currently, only the keyword LIMIT can be enabled as a reserved keyword.

By default, LIMIT is not a reserved keyword so use of the LIMIT clause in a SELECT statement will result in a syntax error.

SELECT * FROM Products 
    ORDER BY ID 
    LIMIT 5;

This means that LIMIT could be used as an identifier in a CREATE TABLE statement for example. In order to enable support for the LIMIT clause, the keyword LIMIT must be enabled as a reserved keyword using the reserved_keywords option. The following statement does this:

SET OPTION PUBLIC.reserved_keywords = 'LIMIT';

Once enabled as a reserved keyword, LIMIT cannot be used as an identifier unless it is enclosed by double quotes, square brackets, or back quotes (`...`).

SELECT * FROM [LIMIT];

Whether a word is acceptable in the comma-separated list of words is determined by the following rules:

It must appear in the list of reserved word candidates.
It must not be one of the reserved words SET, OPTION, or OPTIONS.

The list of reserved word candidates is produced by the sa_reserved_words system procedure. The terms "reserved word" and "reserved keyword" are used interchangeably in this documentation.

You can disable individual reserved keywords using the non_keywords option.

Adding a keyword to the reserved_keywords list that is already a reserved keyword has no effect.

Adding a keyword to the reserved_keywords list that has already been added to the non_keywords list has no effect.

Each new setting of this option replaces the previous setting.

The following statement clears all previous settings.

SET OPTION PUBLIC.reserved_keywords =;