Dumb Question??

Hi there everyone: I have a genericphp/MySQL search+retrival mechanism. Generic in that it takes table names, fieldnames and fieldtypes as form lables and element names. However, because of this I cannot hard-code my SQL queries as they need to be as generic (univerally useful) as possible. I therefore have a lot of "SELECT * FROM <table_name>..." queries. However I would like to be able to specify a particular column ('modified') to appear under specific circumstances, somewhere along the lines of: "SELECT *,!modified FROM <table_name> .." I scanned TFM and couldn't find anything specific to my problem. I have an incling this may not be as easy as I think, so does anyone know of a bodge,kludge or workaround?? Thanks for your time. Russ #-------------------------------------------------------# "Believe nothing - consider everything" Russ Michell Anglia Polytechnic University Webteam Room 1C 'The Eastings' East Road, Cambridge e: r.j.michell@apu.ac.uk w: www.apu.ac.uk/webteam www.theruss.com #-------------------------------------------------------#