Re: Thoughts on "SELECT * EXCLUDING (...) FROM ..."?

Mark Mielke wrote:
> On 10/30/2011 03:50 PM, Eric Ridge wrote:
>> Changes of omission can break your code just as easily.
> 
> I think I wasn't as clear as I intended. In many ways, I think use of 
> "*" in the first place is wrong for code (despite that I do it as well). 
> Therefore, "* EXCLUDING (...)" would also be wrong. It comes to "does 
> the code know what it wants?"
<snip>
> 
> "select *" is not deterministic from a programming perspective.

I understand what you're saying.  However, we're stuck with * because it is in 
the standard and is widely used, and if we have * anyway, then the exclusion 
proposal is just an enhancement to that.  So there is no reason to reject the 
complementary columns feature because of the problems with "select *"; you might 
as well argue to get rid of "select *". -- Darren Duncan