Fetching Cursors that have Keywords as Names

In a few situations, no workaround exists for the syntactic ambiguity that occurs when a keyword is used as an identifier in an SQL program.

In the following example, the FETCH statement specifies a cursor named next. The FETCH statement generates a syntax error because the preprocessor interprets next as a keyword, signifying the next row in the active set and expects a cursor name to follow next. This occurs whenever the keyword NEXT, PREVIOUS, PRIOR, FIRST, LAST, CURRENT, RELATIVE, or ABSOLUTE is used as a cursor name:

/* This code fragment fails */
EXEC SQL declare next cursor for 
    select customer_num, lname from customer; 
EXEC SQL open next;
EXEC SQL fetch next into :cnum, :lname;