"Ken Winter" <ken@sunward.org> writes:
> I ask because I was stuck for two days on the following error message:
> ERROR: syntax error at or near "LOOP"
> CONTEXT: compile of PL/pgSQL function "gen_history" near line 126
> and neither of those tools offered any more help than that. It turned out
> the error was a missing ";" way back in line 53, and it took two days of
> trial and error and staring at the code to find it.
What Postgres version are you using?
I would blame the backend more than the client tools for the failure to
localize this syntax error. We've made significant progress in 8.0
and again in 8.1 on improving plpgsql's error messages --- if you are
not on 8.1 the first thing to try is a backend upgrade.
regards, tom lane