Hi - I am creating a new table that needs 72 columns named mycount-1 to mycount-72 all of type integer

Rather than explicitly state each column name in the initial create I am thinking that I should be able to have a loop with an incremental value which concatenates to "mycount-" then feeds into add column command. Alternatively could this be achieved through a generate-series command.

I have no idea what is or what's best practice to achieve this and I cant find any examples that do this.

if you could point me in the right direction of a thread that helps or some code that would be wonderful.

The comments about the questionable design choice should be considered first.

That being said, you can indeed create such table in a generic statement, making use of psql \gexec utility.

The idea is to create a string containing the command to be executed, and to run it by appending \gexec after the query.

Since you have multiple column, you can at the same time call generate_series and concatenating its output with the column name into a single row.

SELECT 'create table test_rec (id integer, ' || string_agg('mycount_' || i || ' integer',', ') ||');'
FROM generate_series(1,5) g(i);\gexec

On the other hand, I personally find it more efficient for these kind of tasks to open Excel or alike, drag a number list, concatenate with a fixed text, copy-paste-done.