MySQL Bugs: #32498: Alter table documentation sometimes incorrect

Bug #32498	Alter table documentation sometimes incorrect
Submitted:	19 Nov 2007 16:14	Modified:	26 Nov 2007 16:33
Reporter:	Susanne Ebrecht	Email Updates:
Status:	Closed	Impact on me:	None
Category:	MySQL Server: Documentation	Severity:	S3 (Non-critical)
Version:	5.1	OS:	Any
Assigned to:	Paul DuBois	CPU Architecture:	Any

Description:
Version: 5.1.22-rc

MySQL CLI:

mysql> \h alter table
...
| CHANGE [COLUMN] old_col_name column_definition
...

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/de/alter-table.html
...
| CHANGE [COLUMN] old_col_name column_definition
...

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/alter-table.html
...
| CHANGE [COLUMN] old_col_name new_col_name column_definition
...

It seems, that at the help table documentation and at the German documentation the "new_col_name" sneaks away.

The English web documentation is correct. And the results of my test were, that it works with "... old_col_name new_col_name ...".

How to repeat:
Just look through the documentations and compare them

Suggested fix:
add the word "new_col_name", where it sneaked away.

The problem here is that the documentation in all versions was as the German and Japanese versions still are, which stated that column_definition *included* the column name and data type. That has been confusing enough that I recently modified the English version to add new_name and *not* state that column_definition includes the name.

The translations still have the old confusing wording.

So, nothing has "snuck away"; rather, what has happened is that new_name has been added to the ALTER TABLE syntax. (The CREATE TABLE page also was modified not to include the column name in the syntax for column_definition.)

Here is the diff for the change:

http://svn.mysql.com/fisheye/browse/mysqldoc/refman-5.1/sql-syntax.xml?r1=7814&r2=7815

And the changeset comment:

http://svn.mysql.com/fisheye/changelog/mysqldoc?cs=7815

Closing report because the English documentation is correct.