plpgsql strangeness with select into <variable>

I'm debugging a trigger in plpgsql and for some reason or the "select
into <var>" does not seem to work. Here is an unaltered snippet of my
trigger code:

raise notice ''this id : %'',NEW.id;

select into i_hierarchy_id
hierarchy_id
from link_def LD,
link L,
object_link OL
where OL.id = NEW.id
and L.id = OL.link_id
and LD.id = L.link_def_id;

raise notice ''i_hierarchy_id: %'',i_hierarchy_id;

in the log this results in:

NOTICE: this id : 5265
NOTICE: i_hierarchy_id: <NULL>

but when I perform the query on the command line I do get a result:

select hierarchy_id
from link_def LD,
link L,
object_link OL
where OL.id = 5264
and L.id = OL.link_id
and LD.id = L.link_def_id;

hierarchy_id
--------------
1
(1 row)

i_hierarchy_id is declared as integer and is not used before this code nor
as a column name anywhere.

Does anyone have a clue what is going wrong? I use Postgresql 7.3.3 on
FreeBSD 4.5.

--
__________________________________________________
"Nothing is as subjective as reality"
Reinoud van Leeuwen reinoud(dot)v(at)n(dot)leeuwen(dot)net
http://www.xs4all.nl/~reinoud
__________________________________________________