Re: Possible error in psql or Postgres?

On Jun 12, 2012, at 15:21, Dusan Misic <promisic@gmail.com> wrote:

Is this normal Postgres / psql behavior?

griffindb=# \d system.user;
                                  Table "system.user"
  Column   |         Type          |                     Modifiers

-----------+-----------------------+--------------------------------------------
--------
 username  | character varying(20) | not null
 password  | character varying(32) | not null
 firstname | character varying(40) | not null default 'nema ime'::character vary
ing
 lastname  | character varying(40) | not null default 'nema prezime'::character
varying
Indexes:
    "SystemUser_PK" PRIMARY KEY, btree (username) CLUSTER

normal query:

griffindb=# select * from system.user where username = 'root';
 username |             password             | firstname |   lastname
----------+----------------------------------+-----------+---------------
 root     | 1e7db545fccbf4e03abc6b71d329ab4f | Super     | administrator
(1 row)

error query:

griffindb=# select * from system.user where user = 'root';
 username | password | firstname | lastname
----------+----------+-----------+----------
(0 rows)

column user does not exist should throw an error!

PostgreSQL / psql version: 9.1.3 on Windows 7 64-bit

Should Postgres or psql report an error because column used in WHERE clause does not exist? 

http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.0/interactive/functions-info.html

"user" is actually a function the returns the current_user.  It is an SQL special function and thus does not require the use of () after the function name.  So basically you are saying "where current_user = 'root'" which is either a constant true or false for the statement.

David J.