Message-ID: <36df7ebde5717e34d88228266c8aef21dc6e8c75.camel@cybertec.at>
Subject: Re: 7.2.1. The FROM Clause
From: Laurenz Albe <laurenz.albe@cybertec.at>
To: jochen.bandhauer@gmx.net, pgsql-docs@lists.postgresql.org
Date: Sun, 14 Jun 2026 22:09:34 +0200
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On Fri, 2026-06-12 at 09:58 +0000, PG Doc comments form wrote:
> I have a question regarding:
> https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/queries-table-expressions.html#QU=
ERIES-FROM
> Is the following sentence from the docu correct?
> "Instead of writing ONLY before the table name, you can write * after the
> table name to explicitly specify that descendant tables are included."
>=20
> I read it like you can use "* after the table name" instead of "ONLY befo=
re
> the table name" which seems wrong.

The "instead" does not mean that "tab *" is a substitute for "ONLY tab",
but is meant to mean that you cannot use both at the same time, like "ONLY =
tab *".

But I understand your confusion.  To be honest, I only learned about the sy=
ntax
"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 confu=
ses
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.

Yours,
Laurenz Albe