Why is it important to avoid using reserved words like "STATUS" in MySQL queries?

Using reserved words like "STATUS" in MySQL queries can lead to syntax errors or unexpected behavior because these words have special meanings in the SQL language. To avoid this issue, it is important to escape these reserved words by enclosing them in backticks (`) in your queries. This ensures that the SQL interpreter recognizes them as column names or table names rather than reserved keywords.

// Avoid using reserved word "STATUS" by escaping it with backticks
$query = "SELECT `STATUS` FROM users WHERE id = 1";
$result = mysqli_query($connection, $query);

// Fetch data from the result set
if ($row = mysqli_fetch_assoc($result)) {
    echo $row['STATUS'];
}