plpgsql question: inserting records

[Brian Hurt <bhurt(at)janestcapital(dot)com>]

There has to be an easy way to do this and I'm just being stupid and 
missing it.  What I want to do is, in plpgsql, insert a record (of the 
right type) into a table without having to list all the columns of the 
table.  For example, I'd like to do:

CREATE FUNCTION example(id_to_copy INTEGER) RETURNS VOID AS $_$
DECLARE
   t_rec RECORD;
BEGIN
   FOR t_rec IN
       SELECT
           *
       FROM
           table_with_lots_of_columns
       WHERE
           unique_id = id_to_copy
   IN
       t_rec.unique_id := new_unique_id();
       INSERT INTO table_with_lots_of_columns VALUES t_rec; -- or something
   END LOOP;
END
$_$ LANGUAGE plpgsql;

Now, I can do this by listing all the columns from the table, but this 
is annoying.  Is there a way to do this cleaner?


Thanks,
Brian