Re: Section I - 2.9: Use SELECT to confirm set of rows before DELETE

On Mon, Jun 6, 2022 at 09:19:17PM +0000, PG Doc comments form wrote:
> The following documentation comment has been logged on the website:
>
> Page: https://www.postgresql.org/docs/14/tutorial-delete.html
> Description:
>
> Since this tutorial section is coined at beginners, I think it could be
> useful to tip users about the possibility to use a SELECT statement with the
> exact same qualification(s) as the DELETE statement they're planning to run
> to see which rows are about to be deleted, to avoid unintended deletion of
> rows. I suggest something like this:
>
> ...
> Without a qualification, DELETE will remove all rows from the given table,
> leaving it empty. The system will not request confirmation before doing
> this!
>
> You can check which rows will be deleted by any DELETE statement on the
> form:
> ```DELETE FROM tablename ... <qualificaton> ...```
> by rewriting it into a corresponding SELECT statement:
> ```SELECT * FROM tablename ... <qualification> ...```
>
> This is my first attempt at contributing to the community, so please be
> nice. :)

Uh, this is more of a general SQL training that we don't normally cover
in the Postgres docs --- we try to focus on Postgres-specific stuff that
people need to know.

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

Indecision is a decision. Inaction is an action. Mark Batterson