Oracle - Can't use * sign with other column in select clause

Question

Sorry if it\'s trivial, but selecting column with * sign isn\'t working always, and I don\'t find reference to this behavior.

I can select table A

Answer 1

Why are the errors so misleading?

The errors are correct. They just don't guess what you are trying to do. After

select *

the next keyword should be from, so anything else gives

FROM keyword not found where expected

After , there should be a valid expression such as a column name, not * which is unexpected, so you get

ORA-00936: missing expression

Perhaps it would be nice if Oracle wrote a special error message about the incorrect use of *, but so far they have not. You could propose it on the Oracle Database Ideas forum.