Hive How to select all but one column?

Question

Suppose my table looks something like:

Col1 Col2 Col3.....Col20 Col21

Now I want to select all but Col21. I want to change it to unix_timestamp() before I insert into some other table. So the trivial approach is to do something like:

INSERT INTO newtable partition(Col21) 
SELECT Col1, Col2, Col3.....Col20, unix_timestamp() AS Col21
FROM oldTable

Is there a way I can achieve this in hive? Thanks a lot for your help!

Answer 1

Try to setup the below property

set hive.support.quoted.identifiers=none;

Then select all columns except col_21:

select `(col_21)?+.+` from <table_name>; 

For more info refer to this link.

Then insert statement will be

insert into <tablename> partition (col21) 
select `(col_21)?+.+` from ( --select all columns from subquery except col21
select *, unix_timestamp() AS alias_col21 from table_name --select *, create new col based on col21
)a;

By using this approach you are going to have alias_col21 as last column in your select statement so that you can partition based on that column.

In Case of joins:

We cannot refer individual columns((t1.id)?+.+..etc) from each table, so drop the unnecessary columns in select statement.

hive>insert into <tablename> partition (col21)
select * from (
       select t1.* from
         (--drop col21 and create new alias_col21 by using col21
          select `(col21)?+.+`, unix_timestamp() AS alias_col21 from table1
         ) t1 
    join table2 t2 
  on t1.<col-name>=t2.<col-name>)a;