Re: Can't use WITH in a PERFORM query in PL/pgSQL?

I wrote:
> Merlin Moncure <mmoncure@gmail.com> writes:
>> The point being, how do I convert any query to a non WITH variant so
>> it can be PERFORM'd?  Anyways, I always thought having to do perform
>> at all was pretty weak sauce -- not sure why it's required.

> Possibly it was an Oracle compatibility thing ... anyone know PL/SQL
> well enough to say how this works there?

After writing that, I remembered I had an old PL/SQL manual sitting
about, so I took a look.  So far as I can see, there is no PERFORM
statement in PL/SQL, and no SELECT-without-INTO either; that is, the
functionality of executing a SELECT and discarding the result simply
isn't there.

So at this point it looks like we made up PERFORM out of whole cloth,
and we could just as easily choose to do it another way.  Jan, do you
remember anything about the reasoning for PERFORM?

            regards, tom lane