current community

your communities

more stack exchange communities

company blog
Stack Exchange Inbox Reputation and Badges
tour help
Database Administrators Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for database professionals who wish to improve their database skills and learn from others in the community. Join them; it only takes a minute:

Sign up
Here's how it works:
  1. Anybody can ask a question
  2. Anybody can answer
  3. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top
up vote 5 down vote favorite
1

It seems that in Postgres 9.2 this syntax 

SELECT <table name>
FROM <table name>

Returns rows with all columns aggregated as pseudo-CSV, like so:

(1,test,48,,48,,"2016-10-29 00:47:09.348986+00","2016-10-29 00:47:09.348986+00",,1,9,1,1,,1,0,"",,"")
(6,subject,0,,,,"2016-10-30 00:54:38.203023+00","2016-10-30 00:54:38.203023+00",,1,10,1,3,,1,0,content,,)

I'm trying to find the relevant documentation for this behavior. So far I've looked in :

But I can't seem to find any references to it.

share|improve this question
up vote 7 down vote accepted

For each table that is created, Postgres creates a corresponding composite type:

Whenever you create a table, a composite type is also automatically created, with the same name as the table, to represent the table's row type.

When you use the table name in the select list, you are essentially using a single column of that composite type with several fields as part of the record (this is a good example on the difference between row and record and column and field)

The "CSV style" just happens to be the default text representation of a composite type.

A row constructor is closely related to this.

This is also the reason why select (a,b,c) from some_table is something different then select a,b,c from some_table in Postgres

share|improve this answer

Your Answer

 
discard

By posting your answer, you agree to the privacy policy and terms of service.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.