[postgresql] Increment a value in Postgres

I'm a little new to postgres. I want to take a value (which is an integer) in a field in a postgres table and increment it by one. For example if the table 'totals' had 2 columns, 'name' and 'total', and Bill had a total of 203, what would be the SQL statement I'd use in order to move Bill's total to 204?

This question is related to postgresql increment

The answer is


UPDATE totals 
   SET total = total + 1
WHERE name = 'bill';

If you want to make sure the current value is indeed 203 (and not accidently increase it again) you can also add another condition:

UPDATE totals 
   SET total = total + 1
WHERE name = 'bill'
  AND total = 203;