RETURN QUERY in PL/PgSQL?

From: Neil Conway <neilc(at)samurai(dot)com>
To: pgsql-hackers <pgsql-hackers(at)postgresql(dot)org>
Subject: RETURN QUERY in PL/PgSQL?
Date: 2007-04-23 21:17:00
Message-ID: 1177363020.16415.156.camel@localhost.localdomain
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In a PL/PgSQL set-returning function, returning the result set of a
query requires a FOR loop and repeated invocations of the RETURN NEXT
statement:

FOR x in SELECT ... LOOP
RETURN NEXT x;
END LOOP;

This works, but it seems overly verbose. It occurred to me that we could
easily add a new PL/PgSQL statement that evaluates a set-returning
expression and adds *all* the resulting rows to the function's result
set. For example:

RETURN QUERY SELECT ...;

I'm not sure of the right name: "RETURN ROWS" or "RETURN ALL" might also
work. Of course, this is syntax sugar (and superficial sugar at that),
but I believe this is a fairly common requirement.

Comments?

-Neil

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