Does Create Table as Select preserves columns order in Oracle?

Question

I'm using following statement to create a duplicate table with data. But i'm curious to know whether this statement preserves the column order of the old_table in the new_table as it is. Since i need to compare some column data of 2 tables later using MINUS statement.

CREATE TABLE new_table
AS
SELECT *
FROM old_table

Below is the minus statement used to compare. In the following statement cols are queried from ALL_TAB_COLUMNS meta data table.

SELECT COUNT(*) FROM (SELECT cols FROM old_table MINUS (SELECT cols FROM new_table))

Below is the meta data query to get column list in the order.

SELECT COLUMN_NAME FROM ALL_TAB_COLUMNS WHERE TABLE_NAME = 'new_table'
SELECT COLUMN_NAME FROM ALL_TAB_COLUMNS WHERE TABLE_NAME = 'old_table'

My question, Is column order preserved in both new_table and old_table when copied using CREATE TABLE new_table AS SELECT statement mentioned above?

Answer 1

Yes, The New table will have columns exactly in same order as your select query.