Re: Providing an alternative result when there is no result - Mailing list pgsql-general

From Merlin Moncure
Subject Re: Providing an alternative result when there is no result
Date
Msg-id b42b73150905191108l6e3307c8v5f54a91d4bcfe382@mail.gmail.com
Whole thread Raw
In response to Providing an alternative result when there is no result  (Joshua Berry <yoberi@gmail.com>)
Responses Re: Providing an alternative result when there is no result  (Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>)
List pgsql-general
On Mon, May 18, 2009 at 3:13 PM, Joshua Berry <yoberi@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> Is there an easy and efficient way to return a boolean false for a query
> that returns no result, and true for one that does return a result?
>

Probably the best general approach is to:

select count(*) = 1 from
(
  <query> limit 1
)q;

the point being that in some cases (not all obviously) the limit 1 can
be a huge win, as you only care if there are rows or not.  with little
work (you have to be aware of if/when you can tack 'limit 1 onto a
query) you could generalize it into a pl/pgsql dynamic sql function
taking a query string.

merlin

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