Thread: pgsql: Prevent multicolumn expansion of "foo.*" in an UPDATE source exp

pgsql: Prevent multicolumn expansion of "foo.*" in an UPDATE source exp

From
Tom Lane
Date:
Prevent multicolumn expansion of "foo.*" in an UPDATE source expression.

Because we use transformTargetList() for UPDATE as well as SELECT
tlists, the code accidentally tried to expand a "*" reference into
several columns.  This is nonsensical, because the UPDATE syntax
provides exactly one target column to put the value into.  The
immediate result was that transformUpdateTargetList() got confused
and reported "UPDATE target count mismatch --- internal error".
It seems better to treat such a reference as a plain whole-row
variable, as it would be in other contexts.  (This could produce
useful results when the target column is of composite type.)

Fix by tweaking transformTargetList() to perform *-expansion only
conditionally, depending on its exprKind parameter.

Back-patch to 9.3.  The problem exists further back, but a fix would be
much more invasive before that, because transformTargetList() wasn't
told what kind of list it was working on.  Doesn't seem worth the
trouble given the lack of field reports.  (I only noticed it because
I was checking the code while trying to improve the documentation about
how we handle "foo.*".)

Discussion: <4308.1479595330@sss.pgh.pa.us>

Branch
------
REL9_5_STABLE

Details
-------
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/aeb5e82427cb300738a97977192cbe1f9644ae60

Modified Files
--------------
src/backend/parser/parse_target.c    | 53 ++++++++++++++++++++++--------------
src/test/regress/expected/update.out | 18 ++++++++++++
src/test/regress/sql/update.sql      |  9 ++++++
3 files changed, 59 insertions(+), 21 deletions(-)