On 1/30/09, Sam Mason <sam@samason.me.uk> wrote:
> But why not just leave INSERT as it is, it works and is unambiguous!
Because *there is no way to insert a composite type!!!* (you can
expand the type via INSERT ... SELECT, but not for UPDATE).
SELECT foo FROM foo; pulls the foo composite from the table, not the
fields. I still can't understand why you want to not be able to do
this via insert. You are looking for more flexible way to imput
fields, I am looking for a way to input type directly.
> But why is this better than using a *?
because we are not updating specific fields...'*' denotes 'all
columns'. we are setting the type to something else. I want to
update the type directly, not it's fields, because I don't want to
construct the update statement.
(*) is better than *, because at least we are suggesting a composite.
However, let's try and keep the syntax a little regular?
select foo from foo; -- this is how it works now
update foo set foo=somefoo; --why would you want update to work any
way but this way?
likewise, with aliases
select foo f from foo; -- this is how it works now
update foo f set f=somefoo; -- again, this is how it should work
my only point was that there is no aliases in inserts, so there is a
minute probability of case where you can't insert the composite type
directly.
your idea (i think):
update foo f set (*) = somefoo; is a huge departure in syntax and
semantics from the way things work in other places.
merlin