On Sun, 2026-06-14 at 16:40 -0400, Tom Lane wrote: > Laurenz Albe <[email protected]> writes: > > To be honest, I only learned about the syntax > > "tab *" a few days ago. Digging through the history, this syntax has been > > obsolete since 2000. I think we could remove both the paragraph that > > confuses > > you and the asterisk from the syntax diagram. > > I think we've discussed that before, and concluded that removing the > docs would be a disservice to users who are trying to read old code > that does this and don't know what it means. Maybe that argument > is too weak now to justify keeping the docs, but I'm unsure. > I'd be inclined to just rephrase this sentence in hopes of making > it less ambiguous.
Fine by me; here is a patch. I could not resist the temptation to remove the "now always" in "searching descendant tables is now always the default". That sounds too much like this was a recent change. Yours, Laurenz Albe
From 2a3cfb32c7f3fd626617d075ba4f0f3e2818b4e4 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Laurenz Albe <[email protected]> Date: Mon, 15 Jun 2026 08:34:27 +0200 Subject: [PATCH v1] Reword doc for asterisk after table names The syntax "tablename *" has been obsolete since 7.1, but we want to retain it and its documentation for backward compatibility reasons. However, the wording was confusing and could be understood to mean that "tablename *" is the same as "ONLY tablename". Reported-by: Jochen Bandhauer <[email protected]> Author: Laurenz Albe <[email protected]> Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/178125831604.1285960.8250607197280951685%40wrigleys.postgresql.org --- doc/src/sgml/queries.sgml | 8 ++++---- 1 file changed, 4 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-) diff --git a/doc/src/sgml/queries.sgml b/doc/src/sgml/queries.sgml index ec4ca01cd16..3096b986a09 100644 --- a/doc/src/sgml/queries.sgml +++ b/doc/src/sgml/queries.sgml @@ -143,10 +143,10 @@ FROM <replaceable>table_reference</replaceable> <optional>, <replaceable>table_r </para> <para> - Instead of writing <literal>ONLY</literal> before the table name, you can write - <literal>*</literal> after the table name to explicitly specify that descendant - tables are included. There is no real reason to use this syntax any more, - because searching descendant tables is now always the default behavior. + You can write <literal>*</literal> after the table name to explicitly + specify that descendant tables are included, which is the opposite of + <literal>ONLY</literal>. There is no real reason to use this syntax + any more, because searching descendant tables is the default behavior. However, it is supported for compatibility with older releases. </para> -- 2.54.0
