So an incorrect usage results in an exception. What exactly would be the SQL quirk?

What I'm asking is why using :join-by (albeit incorrectly) tells me that the syntax error is in the select expression.

I fixed my problem, so it's a matter of knowing whether this has something to do with how joins work internally, bc I do not know.

What's the sqlmap that triggered the error?

fast, minimal repro but the problem is clearly with that :and

{:select [:thing]
   :from [[:table :t]]
   :join-by [:left [[:table2 :t2]]
             :join [[:table3 :t3]
                    [:= :t2.thing2 :t.thing]
                    [:and [:= :t2.more-conds :t3.more-conds]]]]}

It's really not a big deal that I understand this, but curiosity killed the cat.

That works for me just fine though. Meaning, sql/format works.

hm, well let me try something closer to the actual query, sorry, business stuff I can't reveal.

If you join with any subqueries, then perhaps a :select in one of those subqueries is malformed.

when I comment out what seems to be the offending clause in my query, it works fine. This is what that looks like:

{:join-by [:left [[:Things :ch]]
             :join [[:ThingCode :cc]
                    [:= :ch.ThingCode :cc.ThingCode]]
             :join [[:Degree :deg]
                    [:= :cc.Degree :deg.DegreeCode]
                    [:and
                     [:= :c.ThingCase :ch.ThingCase]
                     [:= :ch.Primary 1]]]
             :left [[:Alias :d]
                    [:and
                     [:= :c.Customer :d.Person]
                     [:= :d.Primary 1]
                     [:= :d.Active 1]]]]}

it's a really huge CTE that is causing me a major headache as it is, so I am hard-pressed to create a better repro.

It's just an example of "garbage in, garbage out", nothing incredibly interesting here. If you really want to know, just print out the stacktrace and follow it.

fair enough, thanks.