There is no ORDER BY in an SQL UPDATE command. Postgres updates rows in arbitrary order:
UPDATE with ORDER BY
To avoid deadlocks with absolute certainty, you could run your statements in serializable transaction isolation. But that's more expensive and you need to prepare to repeat commands on serialization failure.
Your best course of action is probably to lock explicitly with SELECT ... ORDER BY ... FOR UPDATE in a subquery or a standalone SELECT in a transaction - in default "read committed" isolation level. Quoting Tom Lane on pgsql-general:
Should be all right --- the FOR UPDATE locking is always the last step
in the SELECT pipeline.
This should do the job:
BEGIN;
SELECT 1
FROM foo
WHERE baz = 1234
ORDER BY bar
FOR UPDATE;
UPDATE foo
SET bar = bar + 1
WHERE baz = 1234;
COMMIT;
A multicolumn index on (baz, bar) might be perfect for performance. But since bar is obviously updated a lot, a single-column index on just (baz) might be even better. Depends on a couple of factors. How many rows per baz? Are HOT updates possible without the multicolumn index? ...
If baz is updated concurrently, there is still a corner case chance for conflicts:
It is possible for a SELECT command running at the READ COMMITTED
transaction isolation level and using ORDER BY and a locking clause to
return rows out of order. ...
More in the manual here.
Also, if you should have a unique constraint on bar, consider a DEFERRABLE constraint.
The manual on the matter.
Related answer:
Constraint defined DEFERRABLE INITIALLY IMMEDIATE is still DEFERRED?
CREATE TABLEcode. – ypercube yesterday