Re: proposal: plpgsql - iteration over fields of rec or row variable - Mailing list pgsql-hackers

From David E. Wheeler
Subject Re: proposal: plpgsql - iteration over fields of rec or row variable
Date
Msg-id B0743598-779B-4FE2-A3EF-5BC1285C9DE5@kineticode.com
Whole thread Raw
In response to Re: proposal: plpgsql - iteration over fields of rec or row variable  (Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>)
Responses Re: proposal: plpgsql - iteration over fields of rec or row variable
List pgsql-hackers
On Nov 9, 2010, at 9:34 AM, Tom Lane wrote:

> I think there's a fairly fundamental contradiction involved here.
> One of the basic design attributes of plpgsql is that it's strongly
> typed.  Sometimes that's a blessing, and sometimes it's not, but
> it's a fact.  There really isn't a good way to deal with run-time
> field selection while still maintaining strong typing.  I do not
> believe that the answer to that problem is "so let's break strong
> typing".  Rather, the answer is that if that's what you need, you
> need to use a different tool.  There's a reason we support multiple
> PLs.

Yeah, I think that Pavel wants to get at the record values with their types in tact. Not sure how that'd work though,
really.If you know the type of the record columns already, you can just get them. But I'm not sure how you could
introspectthe column names and their types, and then get those types out without casting, except perhaps via EXECUTE… 

Best,

David



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