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

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 ...
?

        hp

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   _  | Peter J. Holzer    | Story must make more sense than reality.
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| |   | hjp@hjp.at         |    -- Charles Stross, "Creative writing
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