Why does this character affect a query?

[DeSaaD37]

I've been trying for the past couple of days to figure out why I kept getting an error on my update query in php/mysql.

This is the original query I was having trouble with:

$update="UPDATE videos SET title='$title', date='$date', 
desc='$desc',  image='$image', sample='$sample', 
clip1='$clip1', clip2='$clip2', clip3='$clip3', clip4='$clip4', 
clip5='$clip5', clip6='$clip6', clip7='$clip7', clip8='$clip8',
full='$full', active='$active' WHERE id='$_GET[id]'";
$updateresult= mysql_query($update) or die(mysql_error()); 

The error stated:

You have an error in your SQL syntax; 
check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right 
syntax to use near 'desc='testing update do no', image='img.jpg', 
sample='t543653et.wmv', clip1='t3' at line 1

As soon as I added this character ( ` ) to my DESC section of the query it worked fine.

like this: `desc`='$desc'


Can anyone explain to me why that character affected the query so that it would work when I didn't need to use that on any of the other parts of the query?

-dro

[Nile]

Using the back ticks ( ` ), it prevents mistakes of reserved words, for example:

If I had a table named AND, I would tick it to not cause further mistakes.

[Schmoopy]

Yea, desc would stand for "ORDER BY DESC" (descending)

You must use ticks or you'll get an error.

[DeSaaD37]

Awesome, I don't know why I didn't catch that when I was calling the table "desc" but thanks for clearing that up for me! I learn something new every day!

[Nile]

Great! Glad to help you! Your welcome!

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