A SELECT statement may be as simple as a request for all rows and all columns
from a specified table. Use the following syntax to retrieve all rows and columns from a table:
SELECT * FROM
table_name
;
The asterisk (*) character, as mentioned in the explanation of SELECT's syntax,
is short-hand for all non-system columns. In essence, the SELECT * requests all
non-system data in the table named
table_name
; this retrieves all columns and all rows, because no row limit is specified. To demonstrate,
Example 4-23 requests all columns (*) from
Book Town's books table.
Example 4-23. Selecting all from the books table
booktown=#
SELECT * FROM books;
id | title | author_id | subject_id
-------+-----------------------------+-----------+------------
7808 | The Shining | 4156 | 9
4513 | Dune | 1866 | 15
4267 | 2001: A Space Odyssey | 2001 | 15
1608 | The Cat in the Hat | 1809 | 2
1590 | Bartholomew and the Oobleck | 1809 | 2
25908 | Franklin in the Dark | 15990 | 2
1501 | Goodnight Moon | 2031 | 2
190 | Little Women | 16 | 6
1234 | The Velveteen Rabbit | 25041 | 3
2038 | Dynamic Anatomy | 1644 | 0
156 | The Tell-Tale Heart | 115 | 9
41472 | Practical PostgreSQL | 1212 | 4
41473 | Programming Python | 7805 | 4
41477 | Learning Python | 7805 | 4
41478 | Perl Cookbook | 7806 | 4
(15 rows)
