Re: a proposal for a new functionality: "SELECT * [EXCEPT col1 [,col2]]

How do you see this syntax working in a JOIN query?

SELECT x.* EXCEPT x.col1, x.col2, y.col1
FROM tablex AS x
LEFT JOIN tabley AS y;

The column(s) you want to exclude become ambiguous. Parentheses?

SELECT x.* EXCEPT (x.col1, x.col2), y.col1
FROM tablex AS x
LEFT JOIN tabley AS y;

Could work, but this is encouraging the use of the wildcard selector, which
I'm not sure is a productive or maintainable goal. In exchange for
flexibility, you've added a non-trivial amount of comprehension complexity.
I'm not a big fan of the wildcard selector except in the most trivial cases
and even then only as part of development toward a final query with all
columns specified. Then again I try not to have tables with hundreds of
columns (or even tens in most cases), so my own use cases may bias
me. Personally I just don't like queries where I cannot clearly see what it
being returned to me. Anything that makes that ambiguity more popular will
be viewed with a skeptical eye.

On Tue, Feb 25, 2020 at 2:18 AM Stanislav Motyčka <
stanislav(dot)motycka(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:

> Hello,
>
> Sometimes (for tables with many columns) it would be better and easier to
> write "SELECT" statement with clause "EXCEPT":
> "SELECT * [EXCEPT col1 [,col2]] FROM ..."
>
> It's easier to write "except" one or two columns from all (*) as to write
> names of all columns besides one or two.
> What do you thin about it?
>
> Best regards
> Stano Motycka
>
>