Adding a unique number to each record in a table

On 10/24/2011 11:19 AM, Alexander Farber wrote:

Hello,

I have a table in PostgreSQL 8.4.9 storing
user comments (in the "about" field):

# \d pref_rep
Table "public.pref_rep"
Column | Type | Modifiers
------------+-----------------------------+---------------
id | character varying(32) |
author | character varying(32) |
good | boolean |
fair | boolean |
nice | boolean |
about | character varying(256) |
last_rated | timestamp without time zone | default now()
author_ip | inet |
Check constraints:
"pref_rep_check" CHECK (id::text<> author::text)
Foreign-key constraints:
"pref_rep_author_fkey" FOREIGN KEY (author) REFERENCES pref_users(id)
"pref_rep_id_fkey" FOREIGN KEY (id) REFERENCES pref_users(id)

But now after having 40000 comments I've
realized, that I need a web script for me as
admin - for delete obscene/aggressive ones.

Because doing it thru "psql" is tedious + error prone.

Is there please a way to add a column to my table,
which I could use to uniquely identify each
record in that table (incl. old records)

Regards
Alex

alter table pref_rep add rowid serial;

Will both add the column and set it for existing rows, as well as for
new rows.

-Andy