How to insert a value that contains an apostrophe (single quote)?

Question

What is the correct SQL syntax to insert a value with an apostrophe in it?

Insert into Person
  (First, Last)
Values
  'Joe',
  'O'Brien'

I keep getting an error as I think the apostrophe after the O is the ending tag for the value.

Answer 1

Escape the apostrophe (i.e. double-up the single quote character) in your SQL:

INSERT INTO Person
    (First, Last)
VALUES
    ('Joe', 'O''Brien')
              /\
          right here  

The same applies to SELECT queries:

SELECT First, Last FROM Person WHERE Last = 'O''Brien'

---

The apostrophe, or single quote, is a special character in SQL that specifies the beginning and end of string data. This means that to use it as part of your literal string data you need to escape the special character. With a single quote this is typically accomplished by doubling your quote. (Two single quote characters, not double-quote instead of a single quote.)

Note: You should only ever worry about this issue when you manually edit data via a raw SQL interface since writing queries outside of development and testing should be a rare occurrence. In code there are techniques and frameworks (depending on your stack) that take care of escaping special characters, SQL injection, etc.

Answer 2

You just have to double up on the single quotes...

insert into Person (First, Last)
values ('Joe', 'O''Brien')

Answer 3

You need to escape the apostrophe. In T-SQL this is with a double apostrophe, so your insert statement becomes:

Insert into Person
(First, Last)
Values
'Joe', 'O''Brien'

Answer 4

Because a single quote is used for indicating the start and end of a string; you need to escape it.

The short answer is to use two single quotes - '' - in order for an SQL database to store the value as '.

Look at using REPLACE to sanitize incoming values:

• Oracle REPLACE
• SQL Server REPLACE
• MySQL REPLACE
• PostgreSQL REPLACE

You want to check for '''', and replace them if they exist in the string with '''''' in order to escape the lone single quote.

Answer 5

eduffy had a good idea. He just got it backwards in his code example. Either in JavaScript or in SQLite you can replace the apostrophe with the accent symbol.

He (accidentally I am sure) placed the accent symbol as the delimiter for the string instead of replacing the apostrophe in O'Brian. This is in fact a terrifically simple solution for most cases.

Answer 6

The apostrophe character can be inserted by calling the CHAR function with the apostrophe's ASCII table lookup value, 39. The string values can then be concatenated together with a concatenate operator.

Insert into Person
  (First, Last)
Values
  'Joe',
  concat('O',char(39),'Brien')

Answer 7

Single quotes are escaped by doubling them up,

The following SQL illustrates this functionality.

declare @person TABLE (
    [First] nvarchar(200),
    [Last] nvarchar(200)
)

insert into @person 
    (First, Last)
values
    ('Joe', 'O''Brien')

select * from @person

Results

First   | Last
===================
Joe     | O'Brien

Answer 8

use double quotation marks around the values.

insert into Person (First, Last) Values("Joe","O'Brien")

Answer 9

Use a backtick (on the ~ key) instead;

`O'Brien`