Re: Exclude fields from SELECT command

At 05:20 PM 3/16/2009, pgsql-sql-owner@postgresql.org wrote:
>In-Reply-To: <1992170861895942422@unknownmsgid>
>References: <1992170861895942422@unknownmsgid>
>Date: Mon, 16 Mar 2009 22:45:54 +0100
>Message-ID: 
><162867790903161445i78127316s1c0deb3bec0e15e5@mail.gmail.com>
>Subject: Re: Exclude fields from SELECT command
>From: Pavel Stehule 
>To: Charles Tam 
>Cc: pgsql-sql@postgresql.org
>
>2009/3/16 Charles Tam :
> > Hi Everybody
> >
> >
> >
> > I’ve a table with 35 fields and would like 
> to perform a SELECT command
> > without specifying every single field.
> >
> > As such, I’ve use the SELECT * 
> command.  Is there an approach to exclude 5
> > fields from being returned?
> >
> >
> >
>
>hello
>
>no, there are no way
>
>regards
>Pavel Stehule

I think Pavel is right for 99% of the cases. But 
there is a "cure that is worse than the disease."

You could select all columns from a bunch of 
tables without knowing what the column names 
were, excepting N columns, by iterating through 
the info schema data and building a SQL select 
appropriately (sql meta-programming I guess you 
would call it). But it's a real chore to do 
manually. If you have this need for some 
programmatic purpose (where some initial 
investment in effort will pay future dividends), 
then check out the info schema options:

http://developer.postgresql.org/pgdocs/postgres/infoschema-columns.html

In your case, I think you'd be looking for five 
values of "table_name" and then looking at all 
the "column_name" fields, building your column 
list, excepting the column_names you wish to exclude..

Best,

Steve