never a BEGIN block. This is required for Oracle compatibility and is
also plainly stated to be the behavior by our original documentation
(up until 8.1, in which the docs were adjusted to match the code's behavior;
but actually the old docs said the correct thing and the code was wrong).
Not back-patched because this introduces an incompatibility that could
break working applications. Requires release note.
more nearly matching the core SQL scanner. The user-visible effects are:
* Block comments (slash-star comments) now nest, as per SQL spec.
* In standard_conforming_strings mode, backslash as the last character of a
non-E string literal is now correctly taken as an ordinary character;
formerly it was misinterpreted as escaping the ending quote. (Since the
string also had to pass through the core scanner, this invariably led
to syntax errors.)
* Formerly, backslashes in the format string of RAISE were always treated as
quoting the next character, regardless of mode. Now, they are ordinary
characters with standard_conforming_strings on, while with it off, they
introduce the same set of escapes as in the core SQL scanner. Also,
escape_string_warning is now effective for RAISE format strings. These
changes make RAISE format strings work just like any other string literal.
This is implemented by copying and pasting a lot of logic from the core
scanner. It would be a good idea to look into getting rid of plpgsql's
scanner entirely in favor of using the core scanner. However, that involves
more change than I can justify making during beta --- in particular, the core
scanner would have to become re-entrant.
In passing, remove the kluge that made the plpgsql scanner emit T_FUNCTION or
T_TRIGGER as a made-up first token. That presumably had some value once upon
a time, but now it's just useless complication for both the scanner and the
grammar.
locate the target row, if the cursor was declared with FOR UPDATE or FOR
SHARE. This approach is more flexible and reliable than digging through the
plan tree; for instance it can cope with join cursors. But we still provide
the old code for use with non-FOR-UPDATE cursors. Per gripe from Robert Haas.
via a tuplestore instead of value-per-call. Refactor a few things to reduce
ensuing code duplication with nodeFunctionscan.c. This represents the
reasonably noncontroversial part of my proposed patch to switch SQL functions
over to returning tuplestores. For the moment, SQL functions still do things
the old way. However, this change enables PL SRFs to be called in targetlists
(observe changes in plperl regression results).
so long as all the trailing arguments are of the same (non-array) type.
The function receives them as a single array argument (which is why they
have to all be the same type).
It might be useful to extend this facility to aggregates, but this patch
doesn't do that.
This patch imposes a noticeable slowdown on function lookup --- a follow-on
patch will fix that by adding a redundant column to pg_proc.
Pavel Stehule
HINT fields to a user-thrown error message, and to specify the SQLSTATE
error code to use. The syntax has also been tweaked so that the
Oracle-compatible case "RAISE exception_name" works (though you won't get a
very nice error message if you just write that much). Lastly, support
the Oracle-compatible syntax "RAISE" with no parameters to re-throw
the current error from within an EXCEPTION block.
In passing, allow the syntax SQLSTATE 'nnnnn' within EXCEPTION lists,
so that there is a way to trap errors with custom SQLSTATE codes.
Pavel Stehule and Tom Lane
except that it returns the string 'NULL', rather than a SQL null, when called
with a null argument. This is often a much more useful behavior for
constructing dynamic queries. Add more discussion to the documentation
about how to use these functions.
Brendan Jurd
sugar for PL/PgSQL set-returning functions that want to return the result
of evaluating a query; it should also be more efficient than repeated
RETURN NEXT statements. Based on an earlier patch from Pavel Stehule.
name. With this patch, it is always possible for the user to qualify a
plpgsql variable name if needed to avoid ambiguity. While there is much more
work to be done in this area, this simple change removes one unnecessary
incompatibility with Oracle. Per discussion.
of variable substitution and plan caching behavior in dedicated sections.
(A lot of this material existed already, but was scattered in various places
in the chapter.) Reorganize material a little bit, mostly to try to avoid
diving into deep details in the first introductory sections. Document some
fine points that had escaped treatment before, notably the ability to qualify
plpgsql variable names with block labels. Some minor wordsmithing here and
there.
with a plpgsql-defined cursor. The underlying mechanism for this is that the
main SQL engine will now take "WHERE CURRENT OF $n" where $n is a refcursor
parameter. Not sure if we should document that fact or consider it an
implementation detail. Per discussion with Pavel Stehule.
were accepted by prior Postgres releases. This takes care of the loose end
left by the preceding patch to downgrade implicit casts-to-text. To avoid
breaking desirable behavior for array concatenation, introduce a new
polymorphic pseudo-type "anynonarray" --- the added concatenation operators
are actually text || anynonarray and anynonarray || text.
Standard English uses "may", "can", and "might" in different ways:
may - permission, "You may borrow my rake."
can - ability, "I can lift that log."
might - possibility, "It might rain today."
Unfortunately, in conversational English, their use is often mixed, as
in, "You may use this variable to do X", when in fact, "can" is a better
choice. Similarly, "It may crash" is better stated, "It might crash".
Also update two error messages mentioned in the documenation to match.
more, and standard_conforming_strings less, because in the future non-E
strings will not treat backslashes specially.
Also use E'' strings where backslashes are used in examples. (The
existing examples would have drawn warnings.)
Backpatch to 8.2.X.
merely a matter of fixing the error check, since the underlying Portal
infrastructure already handles it. This in turn allows these statements
to be used in some existing plpgsql and plperl contexts, such as a
plpgsql FOR loop. Also, do some marginal code cleanup in places that
were being sloppy about distinguishing SELECT from SELECT INTO.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Add dynamic record inspection to PL/PgSQL, useful for generic triggers:
tval2 := r.(cname);
or
columns := r.(*);
Titus von Boxberg
Peter Eisentraut
Tom Lane
Bruce Momjian
Alvaro Herrera
Neil Conway