Thread: Shortcut?

I'm running Postgres 7.1.  I read in the documentation that the from
clause can be omitted from a select statement.  The example given in the
documentation is:
SELECT distributors.* WHERE name = 'Westwood';

I tried it on tables in our database, but it doesn't work.  Is that part
of earlier versions of Postgres?

Thanks

Thus spake Phuong Ma
> I'm running Postgres 7.1.  I read in the documentation that the from
> clause can be omitted from a select statement.  The example given in the
> documentation is:
> SELECT distributors.* WHERE name = 'Westwood';
> 
> I tried it on tables in our database, but it doesn't work.  Is that part
> of earlier versions of Postgres?

I assume you mean this.
 SELECT distributors.* WHERE distributors.name = 'Westwood';

I know that this example from my own database works.

devel=# SELECT country.country_name
devel-#     WHERE country.country_id = province.country_id AND
devel-#         province.prov = 'ON';country_name 
--------------Canada
(1 row)

Can you tell me where you found that example.  I couldn't find it in the
documentation sources.

-- 
D'Arcy J.M. Cain <darcy@{druid|vex}.net>   |  Democracy is three wolves
http://www.druid.net/darcy/                |  and a sheep voting on
+1 416 425 1212     (DoD#0082)    (eNTP)   |  what's for dinner.

darcy@druid.net (D'Arcy J.M. Cain) writes:
> Thus spake Phuong Ma
>> SELECT distributors.* WHERE name = 'Westwood';
>> I tried it on tables in our database, but it doesn't work.  Is that part
>> of earlier versions of Postgres?

> I assume you mean this.
>   SELECT distributors.* WHERE distributors.name = 'Westwood';

Yes: you must mention a table in FROM to make its field names available
for reference without qualification.  I think we may have tightened that
in recent releases --- the current political climate is to discourage
use of tables without FROM, since SQL92 doesn't allow it at all.

> Can you tell me where you found that example.  I couldn't find it in the
> documentation sources.

A quick glimpse shows that we still have it in ref/select.sgml (try
'Westward' instead of 'Westwood').  Will fix.
        regards, tom lane