Thread: WHEN SQLSTATE '00000' THEN equals to WHEN OTHERS THEN

David Fiedler <david.fido.fiedler@gmail.com> writes:
> I've stumbled across a code that used this condition, resulting in
> unexpected behavior. I think it worths a note that catching 00000 is not
> possible and that it results in a catch all handler.

Hmph.  The code thinks

     * OTHERS is represented as code 0 (which would map to '00000', but we
     * have no need to represent that as an exception condition).

but it evidently didn't consider the possibility of a user writing
'00000'.  I'm more inclined to consider this a bug and change plpgsql
to use something else internally to represent OTHERS.  We could use
-1, which AFAICS cannot be generated by MAKE_SQLSTATE.

            regards, tom lane

On Wed, 2025-03-19 at 15:03 +0100, David Fiedler wrote:
> I've stumbled across a code that used this condition, resulting in unexpected behavior.
> I think it worths a note that catching 00000 is not possible and that it results in a catch all handler.
> What do you think? Should I post the expected text somewhere?

The code makes no sense, but what about this:

DO $$BEGIN RAISE EXCEPTION SQLSTATE '00000'; END;$$;
ERROR:  00000
CONTEXT:  PL/pgSQL function inline_code_block line 1 at RAISE

Yours,
Laurenz Albe