Refering to MySQL tables with variables

[shawn carrrethiers]

I'm trying to dynamicly create and edit tables, and i haven't had much luck getting it to work. The most intuitive way I could think to try this is to do some thing like:

newtablename='a_table_name'
conn.execute("""CREATE TABLE %s (x int, y int)""",(name,))

but this does not work, giving a error like:

error num: 1064, "You have an error in your SQL syntax near ''a_table_name' (x int,y int)'

I also tried using MySQL's built in variables but that didn't work either, any suggestions?

[Skip Montanaro]

The quoting mechanism only works for parameter values.  Use To substitute for table or column names use Python's % operator instead:

  conn.execute("""CREATE TABLE %s (x int, y int)"""  % name)