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

Andrew Dunstan <andrew@dunslane.net> writes:
> On 11/02/2011 03:16 AM, Valentine Gogichashvili wrote:
>> Putting aside arguments like "it is not a good idea to use * because 
>> it generates not sustainable code especially in case when you extend 
>> table structure",  I think this construct would be really nice for 
>> building ROWs, for example in plpgsql triggers or in conditions for 
>> big update statements:
>> 
>> IF (NEW.* EXCLUDING ( last_modified ) ) IS DISTINCT FROM (OLD.* 
>> EXCLUDING ( last_modified ) ) THEN NEW.last_modified = 
>> clock_timestamp() ; END IF

> That's a very good use case. I could certainly have used this in the past.

Well ... this is inventing use cases that have nothing to do with the
proposed feature and are entirely incapable of being supported by the
proposed implementation.  And I'm not sure why we should put aside the
argument that this is only a good idea in ad-hoc queries, either.
        regards, tom lane