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

On Sun, Oct 30, 2011 at 4:03 PM, Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:
> That's just a gut feeling, I've not tried it ... but the proposed
> syntax sure looks a lot like a call to a function named EXCLUDING.

I think what makes it okay is that its new use is only defined to
immediately follow an asterisk in the "target_el" production. If you
look at gram.y:11578 (from git HEAD), I was thinking this:
| a_expr
{
$$ = makeNode(ResTarget);
$$->name = NULL;
$$->indirection = NIL;
$$->val = (Node *)$1;
$$->location = @1;
}
+ | '*' EXCLUDING '(' columnref_list ')'
+ {
+ /** make magic happen */
+ }
| '*'
{
ColumnRef *n = makeNode(ColumnRef);
n->fields =
list_make1(makeNode(A_Star));
n->location = @1;

$$ = makeNode(ResTarget);
$$->name = NULL;
$$->indirection = NIL;
$$->val = (Node *)n;
$$->location = @1;
}

And it looks like something similar would be necessary in the
"indirection_el" production, around line 11478. But that might be
overly simplistic (and wrong).

eric