# Error in creating an external table in Athena: Watch out for hyphens!

By [knowledge capsule](https://paragraph.com/@knowledge-capsule) · 2023-07-17

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The following CREATE statement was issued in AWS Athena's Query Editor to create an external table for CloudFront access log acquisition.

    CREATE EXTERNAL TABLE IF NOT EXISTS cf_log ( 
        request_date string, 
        request_time string, 
        x_edge_location string, sc_bytes int, 
        client_ip string, 
        cs_method string, 
        cs_host string, 
        cs_uri_stem string, 
        sc_status string, 
        cs_referer string, 
        user_agent string, 
        uri_query string, 
        cookie string, 
        x_edge_result_type string, 
        x_edge_request_id string, 
        x_host_header string, 
        cs_protocol string, 
        cs_bytes int, 
        time_taken DECIMAL(8,3), 
        x_forwarded_for string, 
        ssl_protocol string, 
        ssl_cipher string, 
        x_edge_response_result_type string, 
        cs-protocol-version string, 
        fle-status string, 
        fle-encrypted-fields string 
    ) ROW FORMAT SERDE 'org.apache.hadoop.hive.serde2.lazy.LazySimpleSerDe' 
    WITH SERDEPROPERTIES ( 
        'serialization.format' = '\t', 
        'field.delim' = '\t' 
    ) 
    LOCATION 's3://{S3 bucket name}/' 
    TBLPROPERTIES ( 
        'has_encrypted_data'='false', 
        'skip.header.line.count'='2' 
    );
    

However, I get the following error and cannot create the table.

    line 1:8: no viable alternative at input 'create external' (service: amazonathena; status code: 400; error code: invalidrequestexception; request id: {request id}
    

The cause was due to the presence of hyphenated strings in column names.

    cs-protocol-version string, 
    fle-status string, 
    fle-encrypted-fields string
    

After correcting to underbar, it can now be executed without error.

    cs_protocol_version string, 
    fle_status string, 
    fle_encrypted_fields string

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*Originally published on [knowledge capsule](https://paragraph.com/@knowledge-capsule/error-in-creating-an-external-table-in-athena-watch-out-for-hyphens)*