Re: dynamic field names in a function.

On Sat, Mar 31, 2001 at 12:42:29AM -0500, Tom Lane wrote:
> Soma Interesting <dfunct(at)telus(dot)net> writes:
> > In the following, is there something I can do so that postgres will
> > evaluate NEW.qty to NEW.name, treating qty as a variable and evaluating it
> > before evaluating the field reference?
>
> Plain PLSQL will not do this --- it wants to know field names when the
> query is first compiled. (This is a feature, not a bug, since it
> implies that the query can be optimized during compilation.)
>
> You could use PLTCL or PLPERL instead. Both of them treat queries
> as plain strings that you assemble out of whatever parts you please
> and then pass to the query engine. Of course you pay the cost of
> re-planning the query from scratch every time --- there's no free lunch.

<ding ding ding> there's that magic word PLPERL again... !

HOW do you find out if your postgresql (mine's 7.0.3) can support
the plperl.so feature? And HOW do you go about installing it, if
it does? What parts are necessary?

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