Weird sql error, calling a something a column that isn't a column

Question

I have an sql statement that looks like this: SELECT name FROM companies WHERE name = government;

But then the error says this: Unknown column 'government' in 'where clause',

But anyway, why is this happening? I've been stuck on it for 30 minutes and simply putting SELECT name FROM companies will work (no error).

Yes, sorry I'm used to using pdo statements in php and I forgot that you can't treat strings the same way as integers. — SirSpeciam, Jun 01 '20 at 04:09

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 01 '20 at 04:06

3

You want to compare a column against a literal string - for this, you need to surround the string with single quotes, otherwise the database takes it as a column name. So:

SELECT name FROM companies WHERE name = 'government';

answered Jun 01 '20 at 04:06

GMB

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score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jun 01 '20 at 04:07

0

You need to put quotes ' around government

SELECT 
    name 
FROM companies 
WHERE name = 'government';

answered Jun 01 '20 at 04:07

zealous

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Weird sql error, calling a something a column that isn't a column

2 Answers2