Thread: plpgsql: PERFORM vs. SELECT INTO (PERFORM not setting FOUND variable?)

Hi,

I'm probably misintepreting the documented equivalence of PERFORM and 
SELECT INTO as far as the special variable FOUND is concerned, but the 
following 2 definitions do not seem to produce the same result.

create table blup ( t1 text, t2 text );

create function blup_unique2 (text,text) returns boolean as 'begin 
perform (select 1 from blup where t1=$1 or t1=$2 or t2=$1 or t2=$2 or 
$1=$2 limit 1); return NOT FOUND; end' LANGUAGE plpgsql;

create function blup_unique3 (text,text) returns boolean as 'declare x 
record; begin select into x 1 from blup where t1=$1 or t1=$2 or t2=$1 or 
t2=$2 or $1=$2 limit 1; return NOT FOUND; end' LANGUAGE plpgsql;

The first will always produce false, i.e. apparently the subquery used 
by PERFORM will not set the variable FOUND as expected. Is this correct?

(btw.: I'm trying a few ways to ensure that all values in both t1 and t2 
are unique:
alter table blup add constraint check (blup_unique3(t1,t2)); - perhaps there are more elegant ways, any suggestions?)

Regards, Marinos

Marinos Yannikos <mjy@geizhals.at> writes:
> create function blup_unique2 (text,text) returns boolean as 'begin 
> perform (select 1 from blup where t1=$1 or t1=$2 or t2=$1 or t2=$2 or 
> $1=$2 limit 1); return NOT FOUND; end' LANGUAGE plpgsql;

You've got a syntax problem.  PERFORM is syntactically like SELECT,
so what you wrote is equivalent toSELECT (SELECT 1 FROM blup ....)
In other words, you are evaluating a scalar subquery, which is going to
return either "1" or "NULL" depending on whether the WHERE matches,
or give an error if the WHERE matches multiple rows (a case you wouldn't
hit because of the LIMIT).  So the outer SELECT produces exactly one row
containing the scalar result, and FOUND always ends up TRUE.

So what you want is just
PERFORM 1 FROM blup ...

and then check the FOUND result from that.

(The 8.0 docs hopefully explain this more clearly; PERFORM was
certainly not very well documented before.)

Note that I'm concerned that the performance of this will suck ...
in particular you really ought to test the $1=$2 case separately.
        regards, tom lane

Marinos Yannikos wrote:
> (btw.: I'm trying a few ways to ensure that all values in both t1 and t2 
> are unique:
> alter table blup add constraint check (blup_unique3(t1,t2));
>  - perhaps there are more elegant ways, any suggestions?)
>

No doubt someone will tell me this is Very Wrong:

create table blup_text(txt text primary key);

create table blup (t1 text references blup_text(txt),                   t2 text references blup_text(txt));

You may want to add NOT NULL conditions to t1, t2.

If your text values are long, this may be a good place to use synthetic 
keys - e.g.

create table blup_text(id serial primary key, txt text unique);
create table blup(t1 integer references blup_text(id),                  t2 integer references blub_text(id));



-- 
Edmund Bacon <ebacon@onesystem.com>