On Sun, Sep 16, 2012 at 11:58:06PM -0400, Tom Lane wrote: > barrybr...@sierracollege.edu writes: > > I sometime see my users delete all rows from a table using a command like > > this: > > > DELETE FROM customer *; > > > The question is: what is the star? Is it a table alias or an > > output_expression? > > Neither; it specifies to search the table and its inheritance children, > ie, the opposite of ONLY. This has been the default behavior (unless > you change the setting of sql_inheritance) for many years, so "*" has > largely fallen into disuse; but it's still accepted. > > However ... I went looking for documentation on this point, and I'm > darned if I can find any. There certainly used to be some, but > apparently somebody got over-eager about editing the docs to reflect > the modern default behavior. The "*" doesn't even appear in the syntax > summaries for most of the commands where it's allowed, which is flat > wrong --- anywhere you can write "ONLY tablename", it's valid to write > "tablename*" instead. > > So we have some docs work to do. Thanks for pointing it out.
Is there any value to having * vs just not using ONLY? I am not sure documenting this is helping us, and it would add more clutter. Isn't this like how we don't document the old COPY syntax. -- Bruce Momjian <br...@momjian.us> http://momjian.us EnterpriseDB http://enterprisedb.com + It's impossible for everything to be true. + -- Sent via pgsql-bugs mailing list (pgsql-bugs@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-bugs
