No error when column doesn't exist

I've just spent a couple of hours tracking down a bug which turned out
to be a typo in my code. What surprises me is that the SQL in question
didn't immediately produce an error. Here's a simplified example:

CREATE TABLE foo(a int, b int);
INSERT INTO foo VALUES(1,2);
SELECT foo.text FROM foo;

I expected that to generate an error: column foo.text does not exist.
Instead it treats "foo.text" as "foo.*::text AS text":

SELECT foo.text FROM foo;
 text
-------
 (1,2)
(1 row)

If foo actually does have a column called text, this works as expected,
selecting just that column.

Is this a feature or a bug?

Dean

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