Re: Help with simple function

Instead of:

interval "numDays day"

use:

(numDays * (interval '1 day'))

Also, note that in your "select to_char...." you have misspelled (sp?)
interval as "inteval".

And last but not least, you can do simple day addition and subtraction
with dates using integers. For example:

> select '2005-12-26'::date + 8;

returns '2006-01-03'. However, I'm not sure if that will work with
7.3.x. Good luck with your 8.x install!

Jason



________________________________

From: pgsql-admin-owner@postgresql.org
[mailto:pgsql-admin-owner@postgresql.org] On Behalf Of Chris Hoover
Sent: Wednesday, December 28, 2005 8:49 AM
To: pgsql-admin@postgresql.org
Subject: [SPAM] - [ADMIN] Help with simple function - Bayesian Filter
detected spam


I need some help.  I am trying to get a very simple function written to
help our developers.  Unfortunetly, the language we are developing in is
giving us some grief over trying to do a "select to_char((current_date -
inteval '1 day'),'yyyymmdd') into x".  It is complaining about the use
of the work interval.

Anyway, I thought, no problem, I'll just create a date increment and
date decrement set of functions.  However, I can not get them to work.
Can someone please point out what is wrong?

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION "public"."date_dec" (date, integer) RETURNS
varchar AS'
declare
       startDate alias for $1;
       numDays alias for $2;
       retDate varchar(8);
begin
  select to_char((startDate - interval ''numDays day''),''yyyymmdd'')
into retDate;
  return retDate;
end;
'LANGUAGE 'plpgsql' VOLATILE CALLED ON NULL INPUT SECURITY INVOKER;


When I try to run this, it complains about numDays - "Error:  Bad
interval external representation 'numDays day'".  Is there anyway around
this?  I am trying to keep the function generic so that our developers
can use it to calculate any date range.

Thanks for any help,

Chris

PG7.3.4 (8.1.1 upgrade happening next month)