Re: Can we go beyond the standard to make Postgres radically better?

On Thu, Feb 10, 2022 at 06:25:45PM +0100, Peter J. Holzer wrote:
> On 2022-02-10 18:22:29 +0100, Peter J. Holzer wrote:
> > On 2022-02-09 21:14:39 -0800, Guyren Howe wrote:
> > > • SELECT * - b.a_id from a natural join b
> > > □ let me describe a select list by removing fields from a relation. In
> > > the example, I get all fields in the join of a and b other than the
> > > shared key, which I only get once.
> >
> > Natural join already does this.
> >
> > My use case for such a feature are tables which contain one column (or a
> > small number of columns) which you usually don't want to select: A bytea
> > column or a very wide text column. In a program I don't mind (in fact I
> > prefer) listing all the columns explicitely, but exploring a database
> > interactively with psql typing lots of column names is tedious
> > (especially since autocomplete doesn't work here).
>
> Forgot to add: I think that the syntax would have to be more explicit.
> It's too easy to mix up
> SELECT * - b.a_id FROM ...
> and
> SELECT *, - b.a_id FROM ...
>
> Maybe
> SELECT * EXCEPT b.a_id FROM ...

Yes, this was proposed on hackers a few months ago and a patch was
proposed:

https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/flat/892708.1634233481%40sss.pgh.pa.us#1f17923ad50a1442867162991c54ead9

The last post was from October of 2021 so you can email the author to
ask about its status.

--
Bruce Momjian <bruce(at)momjian(dot)us> https://momjian.us
EDB https://enterprisedb.com

If only the physical world exists, free will is an illusion.