Re: Elegant copy of a row using PL

"Merlin Moncure" <mmoncure@gmail.com> writes:
> On 1/16/07, richard lavoie <richard_lavoie@gmx.de> wrote:
>> I've a table with 50 colums. I want to copy a certain row using PL and change only 2 values. The way to do it with
insertis to long. Is there any other elegant way? 

> the basic methodology is to:

> insert select into a scratch table;
> update scratch table;
> insert select back into real_table;

> scratch can be a persistent table (remember to truncate it) or a temp
> table.  if it is a temp, remember to create it before you call your pl
> for the first time in a session.

Also, I think in 8.2 you could use a record variable in plpgsql.

    declare r record;

    select * into r from src where ...;
    r.foo = whatever;
    r.bar = whatever;
    insert into dest values(r.*);

            regards, tom lane