I have had success using: create temp table my_temp as select * from my_table;
Of course, if you don't know the column names, it might be a challenge getting the data back into the new (altered) table. If all you need is to add a column, ALTER TABLE does a good job in later releases. I'm on 3.2.7, and it's been very useful. ALTER TABLE also supports renaming a table, so when I have a more significant change to make, I've found it more useful to rename the original table, create the new table, select data from old to new, and drop the old. But that requires knowing both the old and new schemas. -Clark ----- Original Message ---- From: John Newby <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: sqlite-users@sqlite.org Sent: Monday, July 24, 2006 5:29:16 AM Subject: [sqlite] Altering a table when field(column) names are unknown http://www.sqlite.org/faq.html#q13 Hi, the above link goes to an FAQ on the SQLite website stating that the ALTER TABLE command has limited functionality and recommends creating a temp table and copying everything there, dropping the original table, re-creating it with the desired changes and copying everything back from the temp table and then dropping that. This is all good when the fields(columns) are known in advance, but how would I attempt doing this without knowing the name of the fields? Any ideas? Many thanks John
