v.db.renamecolumn - GRASS manual
Author: GRASS Development Team
Description: v.db.renamecolumn: Renames a column in the attribute table connected to a given vector map.
Keywords: vector, attribute table, database, rename

## NAME

v.db.renamecolumn - Renames a column in the attribute table connected to a given vector map.

## KEYWORDS

vector, attribute table, database, rename

## SYNOPSIS

v.db.renamecolumn
v.db.renamecolumn --help
v.db.renamecolumn map=name [layer=string] column=oldcol,newcol [--help] [--verbose] [--quiet] [--ui]

### Flags:

--help
  Print usage summary
--verbose
  Verbose module output
--quiet
  Quiet module output
--ui
  Force launching GUI dialog

### Parameters:

map=name [required]
  Name of vector map
  Or data source for direct OGR access
layer=string
  Layer number or name
  Vector features can have category values in different layers. This number determines which layer to use. When used with direct OGR access this is the layer name.
  Default: 1
column=oldcol,newcol [required]
  Old and new name of the column (old,new)

## DESCRIPTION

v.db.renamecolumn renames a column in the attribute table connected to a given vector map. It automatically checks the connection for the specified layer.

## NOTES

If the map table is connected through the DBF or SQLite drivers, the renaming is internally done by adding a new column with new name, transferring the contents of the old column to the new column and dropping the old column. This is needed as DBF or SQLite do not support "ALTER TABLE" command to rename columns. Due to this the renamed column is found as last column of the table, it's original position cannot be maintained.

The SQLite driver will exit with an error if the column rename involves only a change of case, i.e., upper-to-lowercase, or lower-to-uppercase. The SQLite protocol considers "NAME" and "name" to be identical column names. In cases like these, the user should rename the original column to an intermediary name, then rename the intermediary to the final name.

## EXAMPLES

Renaming a column:

    g.copy vect=roadsmajor,myroads
    v.info -c myroads
    v.db.renamecolumn myroads column=ROAD_NAME,roadname
    v.info -c myroads

## SEE ALSO

db.execute, v.db.addcolumn, v.db.addtable, v.db.connect, v.db.dropcolumn, v.db.droptable, v.db.select, v.db.update

GRASS SQL interface

## AUTHOR

Markus Neteler

## SOURCE CODE

Available at: v.db.renamecolumn source code (history)

Latest change: Tuesday Jun 24 05:57:51 2025 in commit: 801e552cdaf8ef40f8760dbbcc5a4a5b83b14d40

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