[11.5.362] Misplaced paren gives column suggestions?

[11.5.362] Misplaced paren gives column suggestions?

Adding a paren after your FROM <table> statement will give you column suggestions (erroneously?) but only if you are not aliasing the table?

https://www.screencast.com/t/fns3ui6d3

I think it's something else, just a bit confusing in the described scenario. It's assuming you are after creating temp table or table function or something similar you may need in the code. To see that, don't enter SELECT * FROM. In an empty editor just enter some existing table name and then enter opening parenthesis, you will get the same kind of prompt giving you a chance to select table columns.

SysOp wrote:

I think it's something else, just a bit confusing in the described scenario. It's assuming you are after creating temp table or table function or something similar you may need in the code. To see that, don't enter SELECT * FROM. In an empty editor just enter some existing table name and then enter opening parenthesis, you will get the same kind of prompt giving you a chance to select table columns.

So, is this a defect or by design?

The behavior is by design, however the use case isn't totally clear to me, I personally find it more confusing than helpful.

Hmm. Strange. The only use case that comes to my mind for column picking after a table followed by an opening parenthesis is with the INSERT INTO statement. But that already has its own popup which is correctly a multi-select one (that is, it has checkboxes), and this one is a single-select.

I got some clarifications, this feature was implemented quite a while ago to aid with coding temporary tables, so that one can pick column names from an existing table without typing SELECT.., then add #, @, or some other prefix in front of the name. In short, you can enter name, then type bracket and choose first required column, you can then type comma, and you are prompted for the next columns, after selecting, type comma, and so on. You don't need to remember column names. This kind of generic method supports different databases using very different syntax for creating or declaring temp tables while having a common need to specify brackets and column names which are frequently based on columns in a existing table. Using multi-selection pick list would be an improvement here,