Wow, that just blew my mind(newbie here). I was getting an error for the longest time trying to update a database with a field name explain. Kept saying there was an error with my sql syntax. I almost made a thread here with my code asking why it would not work. I never had to do that in ages. For spite, I changed the name from explain to usermessage and it worked fine. So my question is why is that not allowed. I think I just answered my own question where the word explain is a keyword in mysql like update or insert to when it ran it assumed that explain was me trying to query or something instead of that being the name of a field. am I right? one hour of frustration because of a stupid field name. this is a bit of a rant too. damn I was pissed. happy I resolved it.
You're right. Technically, they are called 'reserved words'. Here's a list of all of them for mysql: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/reserved-words.html