Proposal: plpgsql - "for in array" statement

From: Pavel Stehule <pavel(dot)stehule(at)gmail(dot)com>
To: PostgreSQL Hackers <pgsql-hackers(at)postgresql(dot)org>
Subject: Proposal: plpgsql - "for in array" statement
Date: 2010-09-28 06:24:37
Message-ID: AANLkTikzmmuND9hcBy9vfzRcQTT=a+tEPG9c7izuHOX0@mail.gmail.com
Views: Raw Message | Whole Thread | Download mbox | Resend email
Thread:
Lists: pgsql-hackers

Hello

I looked on some constructs that helps with iteration over array in
plpgsql. I propose a following syntax:

FOR var IN [array variable | array expression]
LOOP
..
END LOOP

var - declared variable - theoretically we can a detect var type from
array type, but it needs a early expression an analyze (not used in
PL/pgSQL), so var should be declared before. This construct ensure
iteration over all items of array. When somebody needs a subscripts
from some dimension, then he can use a proposed function "subscripts".

so iteration over two dimensional array can be written:

DECLARE
i integer;
j integer;
BEGIN
FOR i IN subscripts(myarray, 1) LOOP
FOR j IN subscripts(myarray, 2) LOOP
RAISE NOTICE 'myarray[%,%] = %', i, j, myarray[i,j];
END LOOP;
END LOOP;

When input array is multidimensional, then this array is flattened -
order of iteration is specified by physical store of items inside the
array. This construct iterate over all items of input array - it has a
same behave as "unnest" function.

some examples:

DECLARE
v integer;
a int[] := ARRAY[2,3.4,5];
BEGIN
FOR val IN a
LOOP
RAISE NOTICE '%', val; -- produce 2,3,4,5
END LOOP;

FOR val IN subscripts(a, 1)
LOOP
RAISE NOTICE '%', val; -- produce 1,2,3,4
END LOOP;

FOR val IN subscripts(a,1)
LOOP
RAISE NOTICE '%', a[val]; -- produce 2,3,4,5
END LOOP;
END;

Comments, ideas?

Regards

Pavel Stehule

Responses

Browse pgsql-hackers by date

  From Date Subject
Next Message Tom Lane 2010-09-28 06:53:48 Re: Help with User-defined function in PostgreSQL with Visual C++
Previous Message Li Jie 2010-09-28 05:24:37 Parallel Query Execution Project