By coincidence, I just found that Toad generates an error in the editor when I use "ilm" as a table alias in a query, like this:
select * from dual ilm;
Ctrl+Shift+F refuses to format the statement and the editor underlines the "ilm" with red.
I tried to execute the statement above on a 12.2 database and it executed without error. Is "ilm" a reserved word in a later version?
It seems like it would be valid as an alias, but yes, that's a reserved word so it's probably best avoided. For example:
CREATE TABLE EMP
(
EMPNO NUMBER(4),
ENAME VARCHAR2(10 BYTE),
JOB VARCHAR2(9 BYTE),
MGR NUMBER(4),
HIREDATE DATE,
SAL NUMBER(7,2),
COMM NUMBER(7,2),
DEPTNO NUMBER(2)
)
ILM ADD POLICY COMPRESS SEGMENT AFTER 1 MONTH OF NO ACCESS;Ah, yes, the fun of Oracle reserved words, keywords and the distinction between them.
select * from v$reserved_words order by keyword;
ILM seems to be a keyword, but not a reserved word. So it can be used as a non-quoted identifier, but Oracle recommends against it.
I learned something new today. I did not know about ILM.
Perhaps you could add a feature request to make a distinction between keywords and reserved words? I doubt many people know all of them and the error I got is not very clear about it.
By the way, many keywords are not reserved, even though you might think so. The below code, while highly inadvisable, is valid PL/SQL (and doesn't raise the same error in Toad):
DECLARE
TO_CHAR VARCHAR2(10);
BEGIN
TO_CHAR := 'a';
dbms_output.put_line(TO_CHAR);
END;