I understood the requirement differently.

If the routine would return, say, name and datatype for all columns, then that would be enough to pass

to generic table editors, simple display pages, and...

Think of not using any of the first three columns, and instead constructing the column you want;

use the grouping function to build that new column and also to contrive...

I agree that Ian's trick is totally cool.

Actually, I'd like to comment on the original topic, using * in functions.

Because of "pre-compilation", the function is remembering old info rather

than using...