void stored procedure does return something?

On Thursday 21 January 2010 5:57:14 pm Yan Cheng Cheok wrote:

I have the following stored procedure return void.

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION sandbox()
RETURNS void AS
$BODY$DECLARE
DECLARE me text;
DECLARE he int;
BEGIN
he = 100;
RAISE NOTICE 'he is %', he;
-- me = "Hello PostgreSQL";
END;$BODY$
LANGUAGE 'plpgsql' VOLATILE
COST 100;
ALTER FUNCTION sandbox() OWNER TO postgres;

When I perform query :

SELECT * FROM sandbox();

Everything is fine.

"he is 100" is being printed in message area.

However, when I remove "--" from
me = "Hello PostgreSQL";

I get the following error :
================================================
ERROR: column "Hello PostgreSQL" does not exist
LINE 1: SELECT "Hello PostgreSQL"
^
QUERY: SELECT "Hello PostgreSQL"
CONTEXT: PL/pgSQL function "sandbox" line 7 at assignment
================================================

But isn't my stored procedure is void? Isn't it shouldn't return anything?

Thanks and Regards
Yan Cheng CHEOK

You need to single quote the string like this; 'Hello PostgreSQL'
Double quotes are for identifiers.
See here for full explanation.
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.4/interactive/sql-syntax-lexical.html

--
Adrian Klaver
adrian.klaver@gmail.com