Re: Can we go beyond the standard to make Postgres radically better?

On 2/12/22 13:17, Peter J. Holzer wrote:
> On 2022-02-12 20:50:57 +0100, Peter J. Holzer wrote:
>> On 2022-02-12 01:18:04 +0100, Andreas 'ads' Scherbaum wrote:
>>> On 10/02/2022 18:22, Peter J. Holzer wrote:
>>>> On 2022-02-09 21:14:39 -0800, Guyren Howe wrote:
>>>>> Examples of small things Postgres could have:
>>>>>
>>>>> • SELECT * - b.a_id from a natural join b
>>>>
>>>> My use case for such a feature are tables which contain one column (or a
>>>> small number of columns) which you usually don't want to select: A bytea
>>>> column or a very wide text column. In a program I don't mind (in fact I
>>>> prefer) listing all the columns explicitely, but exploring a database
>>>> interactively with psql typing lots of column names is tedious
>>>> (especially since autocomplete doesn't work here).
>>>
>>> Maybe for this specific use case it's easier to teach psql how to do that,
> [...]
>> I think the easiest way to get the columns would be to EXPLAIN(verbose)
>> the query. Otherwise psql (or whatever your shell is) would have to
>> completely parse the SQL statement to find the columns.
>
> A shell could also provide an "expand select list" function using
> explain.
>
> In fact, you can sort of do that manually:
>
> 1) Prefix your query with explain(verbose)
> 2) Copy the "Output:" line of the top node.
> 3) Edit your query, remove the explain(verbose) and replace the select
> list with the content of the clipboard
> 4) (optional) remove any unwanted columns

Or:

\pset format csv

select * from cell_per limit 0;

line_id,category,cell_per,ts_insert,ts_update,user_insert,user_update,plant_type,season,short_category

Longer version:

\pset format unaligned
\pset fieldsep ','

select * from cell_per limit 0;
line_id,category,cell_per,ts_insert,ts_update,user_insert,user_update,plant_type,season,short_category
(0 rows)

>
> A bit cumbersome but less cumbersome than typing/copying lots of column
> names from the result of a previous query or \d.
>
> hp
>

--
Adrian Klaver
adrian(dot)klaver(at)aklaver(dot)com