valid_name

Returns 0 if the specified string is not a valid identifier or a number other than 0 if the string is a valid identifier, and can be up to 255 bytes in length.

Syntax

valid_name(character_expression[, maximum_length])

Parameters

character_expression – is a character-type column name, variable, or constant expression of char, varchar, nchar or nvarchar type. Constant expressions must be enclosed in quotation marks.
maximum_length – is an integer larger than 0 and less than or equal to 255. The default value is 30. If the identifier length is larger than the second argument, valid_name returns 0, and returns a value greater than zero if the identifier length is invalid.

Examples

Example 1 – Creates a procedure to verify that identifiers are valid:

create procedure chkname
@name varchar(30)
as
     if valid_name(@name) = 0
     print "name not valid"

Usage

valid_name, a system function, returns 0 if the character_expression is not a valid identifier (illegal characters, more than 30 bytes long, or a reserved word), or a number other than 0 if it is a valid identifier.
The SAP ASE server identifiers can be a maximum of 16384 bytes in length, whether single-byte or multibyte characters are used. The first character of an identifier must be either an alphabetic character, as defined in the current character set, or the underscore (_ ) character. Temporary table names, which begin with the pound sign (#), and local variable names, which begin with the at sign (@), are exceptions to this rule. valid_name returns 0 for identifiers that begin with the pound sign (#) and the at sign (@).

Standards

ANSI SQL – Compliance level: Transact-SQL extension.

Permissions

Any user can execute valid_name.