Re: xpath() subquery for empty array - Mailing list pgsql-general

From Scott Bailey
Subject Re: xpath() subquery for empty array
Date
Msg-id 4A5A07B3.10504@comcast.net
Whole thread Raw
In response to xpath() subquery for empty array  (Roy Walter <walt@brookhouse.co.uk>)
Responses Re: xpath() subquery for empty array
List pgsql-general
Roy Walter wrote:
> In postgres 8.4 When running xpath() queries it seems that empty results
> are always returned. So if I query a table containing 1000 XML documents
> a 1000 rows will always be fetched even if the xpath() element of the
> query only matches 10 documents.
>
> The documentation states:
>
>     The function |xpath| evaluates the XPath expression /xpath/ against
>     the XML value /xml/. It returns an array of XML values corresponding
>     to the node set produced by the XPath expression.
>
> Yet it seems that empty node sets (arrays) are also returned. So, my
> thought was to run a subquery to eliminate empty arrays, e.g.:
>
>     SELECT x
>     FROM (SELECT xpath('//entry[contains(p, ''searchtext'')]/@*', docxml)
>     AS x FROM docs) AS y WHERE x <> [test for empty array?????????]
>
> How do I test for an empty array in postgres?
>
> Thanks in advance,
> Roy

WHERE x != array[]::xml[]

pgsql-general by date:

Previous
From: David Fetter
Date:
Subject: Re: [BUGS] BUG #4916: wish: more statistical functions (median, percentiles etc)
Next
From: Simon Riggs
Date:
Subject: Re: Checkpoint Tuning Question