Josh Berkus <josh@agliodbs.com> writes:
> Why is a function which returns void returning a row?
Returning a scalar result that happens to be of type VOID is an entirely
different thing from returning a set result that contains no rows.
> Why is that row
> NULL if it's a SQL function and empty if it's a PLPGSQL function?
I'd say that the SQL function is probably doing the right thing. It
appears that plpgsql has hacked this specially "for backward
compatibility":
/* * Special hack for function returning VOID: instead of NULL, return a * non-null VOID value. This is of
dubiousimportance but is kept for * backwards compatibility. Note that the only other way to get here is * to
havewritten "RETURN NULL" in a function returning tuple. */ if (estate->fn_rettype == VOIDOID) {
estate->retval= (Datum) 0; estate->retisnull = false; estate->rettype = VOIDOID; }
I haven't tested, but I think that diking out this section would make
the result be a null (still of type void).
regards, tom lane
