Escaping list of numbers for Postgres column names

[andydtaylor at gmail.com]

Hi

I have some convenient short place name IDs which would be handy for column names. Unfortunately, many begin with a number. 

I can work around this by appending a letter to each one, but should I escape the number in such a way that I can use it directly as my column name, in the same way as I might an apostrophe? How could I do that? I wondered what the best approach is to take.


My python list come out looking  like this:

>>> print stn_list_short
['9400ZZLUACY1', '490000238006', '490000276005', '9400ZZLUACT2']

I'm producing it using this code:

>>> for row in cursor_from:
...     if row[8]:
...         # Station values for database
...         stn_list_short.append(row[0])

And trying to employ the list something like this:

>>> create_table_fields = '(id serial PRIMARY KEY, station_code varchar, %s varchar)' % ' varchar, '.join(map(str, "\" + str(stn_list_short)))


Thanks,


Andy