Bug / Unintentional Feature: non-immutable functions can be used for generated columns. - Mailing list pgsql-bugs

Important preface: This "bug" turns out to enable functionality that is extremely useful. Please carefully consider how the usefulness of this can be retained when "fixing" the bug.

No error or warning or behavioral problems occur if the function used to fill a generated column is replaced with a non-immutable version after it is assigned as the column generator.

SQL which reproduces this issue, as well as showing one valid (useful) use-case for why this isn't a bad thing in itself:

create function gen_tmp() returns text
language plpgsql
immutable
as $$
declare
_tmp text;
begin
loop
select 'C-'||array_to_string(array(select substr('ABCDEFGHJKLMNPQRSTUVWXYZ0123456789',((random()*(33)+1)::integer),1) from generate_series(1,8)),'') into _tmp;
exit when not exists(select 1 from tmp where k = _tmp);
end loop;
return _tmp;
end
$$;

create table tmp(
k text unique primary key generated always as (gen_tmp()) stored,
v text
);

create or replace function gen_tmp() returns text
language plpgsql
as $$
declare
_tmp text;
begin
loop
select 'C-'||array_to_string(array(select substr('ABCDEFGHJKLMNPQRSTUVWXYZ0123456789',((random()*(33)+1)::integer),1) from generate_series(1,8)),'') into _tmp;
exit when not exists(select 1 from tmp where k = _tmp);
end loop;
return _tmp;
end
$$;

insert into tmp (v) select 'test' from generate_series(1,10);

select * from tmp;