Re: 7.2.1. The FROM Clause

Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>

From: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
To: Laurenz Albe <laurenz.albe@cybertec.at>
Cc: jochen.bandhauer@gmx.net, pgsql-docs@lists.postgresql.org
Date: 2026-06-14T20:40:34Z
Lists: pgsql-docs
Laurenz Albe <laurenz.albe@cybertec.at> writes:
> But I understand your confusion.  To be honest, I only learned about the syntax
> "tab *" a few days ago.  Digging through the history, this syntax has been
> obsolete since 2000.  I think we could remove both the paragraph that confuses
> you and the asterisk from the syntax diagram.  We can leave the obsolete
> syntax to accomodate SQL code that hasn't changed for over 25 years, but I don't
> see a reason to keep it in the documentation.

I think we've discussed that before, and concluded that removing the
docs would be a disservice to users who are trying to read old code
that does this and don't know what it means.  Maybe that argument
is too weak now to justify keeping the docs, but I'm unsure.
I'd be inclined to just rephrase this sentence in hopes of making
it less ambiguous.

			regards, tom lane



Commits

  1. Doc: reword discussion of asterisk after table names in FROM.