Are column and table name case sensitive in MySQL?

Question

If I have a column names called category_id and Category_Id, are they different?

And if I have table called category and Category, are they different?

Answer 1

On Unix, table names are case sensitive. On Windows, they are not. Fun, isn't it? Kinda like their respective file systems. Do you think it's a coincidence?

In other words, if you are planning on deploying on a Linux machine, better test your SQL against a Linux-based MySQL too, or be prepared for mysterious "table not found" errors at prod time. VMs are cheap these days.

Field names are case-insensitive regardless.

EDIT: we're talking about the operating system on the MySQL server machine, not client.

Answer 2

From the MySQL documentation:

database and table names are not case sensitive in Windows, and case sensitive in most varieties of Unix. One notable exception is Mac OS X, which is Unix-based but uses a default file system type (HFS+) that is not case sensitive.

and

Column and index names are not case sensitive on any platform, nor are column aliases.

Answer 3

For database and table names, it depends on the underlying operating system. See 8.2.2. Identifier Case Sensitivity

Answer 4

You might find this necessary to read. It is possible to set the case sensitivity in MySQL but it really is only a problem when you work in multiple environments.

Answer 5

Strangely enough it seems to be case sensitive in the MySQL Workbench even on Windows.

We just tried to alter the results of a SELECT statement but the Workbench didn't let us, complaining that our query did not include the table's primary key (which it did but in lower-case) so the result was read-only. Running the same query with the primary key in proper case (ID instead of id) would let us edit the results as expected.