Hi David,

First of all sorry, i haven't answered the full query. Here you go.

You have to put the speech marks (') to enclose the table name is because the way how sp_help works. So, you can not do any setting in sql server to change this behavior.

SP_HELP command expects a varchar as parameter. So, if you are giving just a single object (i mean without qualifying it with owner name or database name) then it is ok. But when you qualify the table name then SQL server doesn't execute the string and generates a PARSE time error. So, if you specify the qualified name (using ') then that parse time error doesnot occur and within sp_help sql server manages to do all stuff for you on the basis of object id. I tried to explain. May be i am not good at explaining.
Let me know if you require some more detail about this.


Raj