## Tcl8.6.0/Tk8.6.0 Documentation > TDBC Package Commands, version 1.0.0 > tdbc_tokenize

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### NAME

tdbc::tokenize — TDBC SQL tokenizer

### SYNOPSIS

package require tdbc 1.0
tdbc::tokenize string

### DESCRIPTION

As a convenience to database drivers, Tcl Database Connectivity (TDBC) provides a command to break SQL code apart into tokens so that bound variables can readily be identified and substituted.

The tdbc::tokenize command accepts as its parameter a string that is expected to contain one or more SQL statements. It returns a list of substrings; concatenating these substrings together will yield the original string. Each substring is one of the following:

1. A bound variable, which begins with one of the characters ':', '@', or '$'. The remainder of the string is the variable name and will consist of alphanumeric characters and underscores. (The leading character will be be non-numeric.)

2. A semicolon that separates two SQL statements.

3. Something else in a SQL statement. The tokenizer does not attempt to parse SQL; it merely identifies bound variables (distinguishing them from similar strings appearing inside quotes or comments) and statement delimiters.

### SEE ALSO

tdbc, tdbc::connection, tdbc::statement, tdbc::resultset

### KEYWORDS

TDBC, SQL, database, tokenize

### COPYRIGHT

Copyright (c) 2008 by Kevin B. Kenny.
Copyright © 2008 by Kevin B. Kenny.