Re: So what's an "empty" array anyway?

On Oct 21, 2008, at 13:00, Andrew Chernow wrote:

>> On Oct 21, 2008, at 12:08, Simon Riggs wrote:
>> If we got rid of zero dimension arrays, how would I declare a new  
>> empty array in a PL/pgSQL function?
>
> Why would you want to do that?  Is there a use case for that?

Perhaps not. In older versions of PostgreSQL, I *had* to initialize an  
empty array in a DECLARE block or else I couldn't use it with  
array_append() to collect things in an array in a loop. I don't have  
to do so 8.3, but I keep it that way in some modules for compatibility  
reasons.

But since that was perhaps an issue with older versions of PostgreSQL  
that has since been addressed, I guess I just think too much like a  
Perl hacker, where I can add things to an array as I need to. That's  
different from SQL arrays, where you can't add a value to an existing  
array, create a new array from an old one plus a new value.

So I guess I don't *have* to have it, but for compatibility with older  
versions of PostgreSQL, I think they should be kept.

Best,

David