Increment a value in Postgres

Question

I'm a little new to postgres. I want to take a value (which is an integer) in a field in a postgres table and increment it by one. For example if the table 'totals' had 2 columns, 'name' and 'total', and Bill had a total of 203, what would be the SQL statement I'd use in order to move Bill's total to 204?

Answer 1

UPDATE totals 
   SET total = total + 1
WHERE name = 'bill';

If you want to make sure the current value is indeed 203 (and not accidently increase it again) you can also add another condition:

UPDATE totals 
   SET total = total + 1
WHERE name = 'bill'
  AND total = 203;