From: Chris Browne <cbbrowne@acm.org>
Subject: Re: changing a column's position in table, how do you do that
Date: Tue, 27 Sep 2005 23:24:13 -0400
Organization: cbbrowne Computing Inc
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Message-ID: <60wtl1j2n6.fsf@dba2.int.libertyrms.com>
References: <4339CD1B.10404@verizon.net>
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To: pgsql-sql@postgresql.org

fmiddleton@verizon.net (Ferindo Middleton Jr) writes:
> Is there a way to change the position attribute of a column in a
> table? I have data that I need to import into various tables in my db
> on a consistent basis... I usually us e the COPY ... FROM query but I
> can't control the -order- of the fields my client dumps the data so I
> would like to be able to change the position the columns in my table
> to be able to better align the data to be imported with the format of
> my table. I was thinking I could do something like "ALTER TABLE ALTER
> COLUMN ... " or something like that to change the columns position in
> the table but I can't figure out how.

If you're running PostgreSQL 7.4 or later, you can specify field names
in the COPY statement.  That strikes me as a better way to control
this.
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