Question

I have a table with 27 varchar fields. I want to make all fields lowercase, but i want to do it in one short mysql call.

This does a single field:

UPDATE table
SET field = LOWER(field)

How do I do the equivalent of this (which doesn’t work):

UPDATE table
SET * = LOWER(*)

Answer 1

You can’t do it with your creative attempt SET * = LOWER(*) etc.

You can however do it like this:

UPDATE table SET
column1 = LOWER(column1),
column2 = LOWER(column2),
 -- etc, listing all text type columns
columnN = LOWER(columnN);

The reason there’s no “shortcut” is probably because this pattern is so infrequently needed.