Re: DESC - Mailing list pgsql-novice

From Mike Castle
Subject Re: DESC
Date
Msg-id 20001122125412.A15952@thune.mrc-home.org
Whole thread Raw
In response to Re: DESC  ("Albert REINER" <areiner@tph.tuwien.ac.at>)
Responses Re: DESC  ("D. Duccini" <duccini@backpack.com>)
Re: DESC  (Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>)
Re: DESC  (Rynell Wesson <rwesson@cs.utexas.edu>)
List pgsql-novice
On Wed, Nov 22, 2000 at 06:38:15PM +0100, Albert REINER wrote:
> And if you start psql with option -E you will see the actual
> SQL-queries used by \d.

That's nifty.  I've read through all of the pgsql documentation before
starting everything, but I think I'm suffering a bit from information
overload.  I knew this information was somewhere, I just couldn't remember
where.

So, thanks to all who pointed me to \d.

Ok then.  It looks to me like both "DESC" and "DESCRIBE" are SQL keywords.
DESC apparently is meant for descending, so I'm guessing that Oracle's
sqlplus usage of DESC is an extension.  Is that correct?

If so, is "DESCRIBE" the ANSI command that should do what \d does or does
it serve another purpose in ANSI?  (A pointer as to where to find this
explicitly would be nice; will eventually purchase the standard myself).

If DESCRIBE is supposed to do that, is there any reason that pgsql doesn't
do that outside of "\d works, so no one has bothered to implement it."

Thanks,
mrc
--
       Mike Castle       Life is like a clock:  You can work constantly
  dalgoda@ix.netcom.com  and be right all the time, or not work at all
www.netcom.com/~dalgoda/ and be right at least twice a day.  -- mrc
    We are all of us living in the shadow of Manhattan.  -- Watchmen

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