A C parser for CREATE and ALTER TABLE SQLite statements

Huh, weirdly enough I&#x27;ve been hoping for exactly this kind of thing - albeit easily called from Python.<p>My use-case is that with SQLite there are aspects of the table - things like generated columns - which aren&#x27;t yet available via the regular SQLite PRAGMAs for introspecting tables.<p>For those things, the only way to introspect them is to read the CREATE TABLE statement out of the &quot;sqlite_master&quot; table and parse it.<p>But you need a very robust parser!<p>I&#x27;ve been investigating tree-sitter recently for this, notes here: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;til.simonwillison.net&#x2F;python&#x2F;tree-sitter" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;til.simonwillison.net&#x2F;python&#x2F;tree-sitter</a><p>If anyone needs an implementation of that advanced ALTER TABLE mechanism (where you create a new table with the new schema, copy the data cross from the old one and then swap the names) my sqlite-utils CLI tool and Python library implements that, as described here: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;simonwillison.net&#x2F;2020&#x2F;Sep&#x2F;23&#x2F;sqlite-advanced-alter-table&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;simonwillison.net&#x2F;2020&#x2F;Sep&#x2F;23&#x2F;sqlite-advanced-alter-...</a>

don&#x27;t you need a full parse even just for create and alter statements since you could always encounter an &quot;as&quot; followed by arbitrarily complex sql?

What was the reason for a hand-written lexer and parser vs using Flex &#x2F; Bison?

The section that says sqlite doesn&#x27;t support drop column links to documentation that says it&#x27;s supported?

So this is more than just on parser for those statements. Very confusing.