Home / Database Structure / Tables / Question No: 208

In MySQL, there are more than one way to rename a table. Renaming a table changes neither a table's structure nor its contents. The following statement renames table tbl1 to tbl2:

ALTER TABLE tbl1 RENAME TO tbl2;

Another way to rename a table is by using the RENAME TABLE statement:

RENAME TABLE tbl1 TO tbl2;

RENAME TABLE has an advantage over ALTER TABLE in that it can perform multiple table renames in a single operation. One use for this feature is to swap the names of two tables:

RENAME TABLE tbl1 TO tmp, tbl2 TO tbl1, tmp TO tbl2;

For TEMPORARY tables, RENAME TABLE does not work. You must use ALTER TABLE instead.