select from custom names columns

Community Support
1

Hi,
i have a table with column names that contain function parameters (so the names contain special characters : and .)

q)table:flip(a,$“b:1.4”)!(1 2 3;4 5 6)

how can I now select these columns?

of course “select b:1.4 from table” does not work as intended, so i thought i should use the functional form:

q)?[`table;();0b;(enlist`col)!enlist`$“b:1.4”]

but this one also doesn’t work.

Are special characters in column names simply not supported or are there any other methods of using them? 

Markus

2

For sanity, you should remove those chars at the earliest opportunity.

e.g.

q).Q.id table
a b14

1 4 
2 5 
3 6 

3

The specific problem here is the “.” character which is used to refererence columns in other tables via a foreign key or linked columns.

http://www.firstderivatives.com/lecture\_series\_pp.asp?downloadflyer=q\_for\_Gods\_June\_2013

http://code.kx.com/wiki/Cookbook/LinkingColumns