what's the escape sequence for hyphen (-) in PostgreSQL

Question

I'm trying to rename a database to a name with a hyphen (-).

ALTER DATABASE one RENAME TO one-two; 

And psql returns an error:

ERROR:  syntax error at or near "-" 

What should I use as an escape sequence for "-" character or what's the way to do the above?

Note: I've tried the '\-' and didn't work as well.

Thanks.

Answer 1

Double quotes should do it. But you'll have to always use the quoted-identifier everywhere you reference the database.

ALTER DATABASE one RENAME TO "one-two"; 

Answer 2

Mix double quotes and single quotes as such:

psql --command='create database "db-name-with-dashes"'