Please help me out with this really simple problem. I would like to add a column to a table using ALTER. But a missing left parenthesis error is driving me crazy. What am I doing wrong ? 

Here is my query :

```
ALTER TABLE TEST_TABLE
ADD NAME VARCHAR2<255>;

```

My database is Oracle 11g. My searches have not helped solve this problem. 

[Confusing error about missing left parenthesis in SQL statement](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/10197640/confusing-error-about-missing-left-parenthesis-in-sql-statement)

[oracle sql(missing left parenthesis](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/16044396/oracle-sqlmissing-left-parenthesis)

[ORA-00906: missing left parenthesis](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/22063030/ora-00906-missing-left-parenthesis)