This section is from the "Practical PostgreSQL" book, by John Worsley and Joshua Drake. Also available from Amazon: Practical PostgreSQL.
A table may be safely re-named by passing the RENAME clause to the ALTER TABLE command. The following is the syntax to re-name a table where table_name is the name of the table to be renamed, and new_table_name is the desired new name for the table:
ALTER TABLE table_name RENAME TO new_table_name
A table may be arbitrarily re-named as many times as you like without affecting the data. This may of course be a dangerous thing to do if you are dealing with a table which an external application relies on.
Example 4-9. Re-naming a Table
booktown=# ALTER TABLE books RENAME TO literature; ALTER booktown=# ALTER TABLE literature RENAME TO books; ALTER
 
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