postgresql/doc
Tom Lane 1b4f7f93b4 Allow empty target list in SELECT.
This fixes a problem noted as a followup to bug #8648: if a query has a
semantically-empty target list, e.g. SELECT * FROM zero_column_table,
ruleutils.c will dump it as a syntactically-empty target list, which was
not allowed.  There doesn't seem to be any reliable way to fix this by
hacking ruleutils (note in particular that the originally zero-column table
might since have had columns added to it); and even if we had such a fix,
it would do nothing for existing dump files that might contain bad syntax.
The best bet seems to be to relax the syntactic restriction.

Also, add parse-analysis errors for SELECT DISTINCT with no columns (after
*-expansion) and RETURNING with no columns.  These cases previously
produced unexpected behavior because the parsed Query looked like it had
no DISTINCT or RETURNING clause, respectively.  If anyone ever offers
a plausible use-case for this, we could work a bit harder on making the
situation distinguishable.

Arguably this is a bug fix that should be back-patched, but I'm worried
that there may be client apps or PLs that expect "SELECT ;" to throw a
syntax error.  The issue doesn't seem important enough to risk changing
behavior in minor releases.
2013-12-14 20:23:26 -05:00
..
src Allow empty target list in SELECT. 2013-12-14 20:23:26 -05:00
KNOWN_BUGS Remove extra newlines at end and beginning of files, add missing newlines 2010-08-19 05:57:36 +00:00
MISSING_FEATURES Remove extra newlines at end and beginning of files, add missing newlines 2010-08-19 05:57:36 +00:00
Makefile Remove maintainer-check target, fold into normal build 2013-10-10 20:11:56 -04:00
TODO Update URL. 2008-08-21 20:15:31 +00:00
bug.template Stamp HEAD as 9.4devel. 2013-06-14 14:41:28 -04:00