Re: variables in procedures

Martin,

> How can I distinguish between the name and the value of a variable?

You need to name your variables something *different* from your column
names.  Otherwise, you will get unexpected errors.

A practice I usually follow is prefixing my column-substitiution
variables with "v_".  This allows me, and the PL/pgSQL parser, to keep
the variables straight from the columns.  I also need to fix your
procedure in a couple of places.  Thus:

CREATE FUNCTION test(VARCHAR) RETURNS INTEGER AS '
DECLARE   v_col1 ALIAS FOR $1;  v_result INT;
BEGIN select col1 INTO v_result    from tab where col1 = v_col1; RETURN v_result;
END;´ LANGUAGE 'plpgsql';

Other SQL-procedural languages (e.g. Transact-SQL) force you to prefix
your variables with special characters.  In PL/pgSQL, it's up to you to
maintain consistency.

-Josh Berkus
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