Re: Array of C integers to temporary table?

> Hello.

> What's the "correct" (read: simple, efficient) way to
> pass an arbitrarily sized array of C integers to postgres
> and have it turned into a temporary table?

> I'm using PostgreSQL 7.4.

> I could, of course, turn the array into a long list of
> insert statements:

> BEGIN;
> CREATE TEMPORARY TABLE temp_table (id integer) ON COMMIT DROP;
> INSERT INTO temp_table VALUES (1);
> INSERT INTO temp_table VALUES (23);
> INSERT INTO temp_table VALUES (3889);
...

> But that seems long winded and rather inefficient.

> Any help appreciated!

I'm not quite sure what you mean by an array of C integers. You mean
you have an array in C
that you are trying to bring into PostgreSQL, or a random assortment of
integers in C you would like to bring in,
or you have a PostgreSQL array.

For a PostgreSQL array, I recall this working even in PostgreSQL 7.4

SELECT ary[i] AS c_val
FROM generate_series(1, array_upper(ary,0)) As i

Where ary is the name of your array.

You can then use the above as a subselect in another query

SELECT foo.*
FROM (SELECT ary[i] AS c_val
FROM generate_series(1, array_upper(ary,0)) As i) As foo

or dump into a temp table

INSERT INTO temp_table(id)
SELECT ary[i] AS c_val
FROM generate_series(1, array_upper(ary,1)) As i

So a hard-coded example

SELECT (ARRAY[1,2,3])[i] AS c_val
FROM generate_series(1, array_upper(ARRAY[1,2,3],1)) As i

Hope that helps,
Regina
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