Stef Mientki wrote: > hello, > > I often want to see most of the columns of a table / view / query, but a > few I don't want to see. > So I now create a huge list of fields, > but isn't there a more typo-frindly way, like : > > select * - field33 from table
A syntax option introduced in Date and Darwen's Tutorial D language, an analogy of which I've included in my Muldis D language, is the ALL BUT modifier. Adapted into SQL with that same spelling, if you wanted all the fields except for "field33", it might be spelled like: SELECT ALL BUT field33 FROM table Or, since SQL already tends to use ALL as an implicit alternative to DISTINCT to mean "include duplicates", we could use the * instead: SELECT * BUT field33 FROM table Or if you don't like how that looks, maybe EXCEPT: SELECT * EXCEPT field33 FROM table This could be generalized so you could have any field list on the left of the BUT/EXCEPT, so then you have the full flexibility of what you have now; eg: SELECT foo.*, bar.field20 EXCEPT foo.field5 FROM foo INNER JOIN bar USING (id) Its nonstandard (unless the SQL standard has a feature like this which I'm not aware of), but I think very useful. For example, often users want to get all the result fields except for the artificial fields just used to join the tables. If SQLite's authors want to add such syntax as that, I support it, and other DBMSs could always follow suit. -- Darren Duncan _______________________________________________ sqlite-users mailing list sqlite-users@sqlite.org http://sqlite.org:8080/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/sqlite-users
