Re: syntax question

On Thu, Jun 3, 2021 at 03:21:15PM -0400, Tom Lane wrote:

Adrian Klaver <adrian.klaver@aklaver.com> writes:

On 6/3/21 12:01 PM, Bruce Momjian wrote:

On Thu, Jun 3, 2021 at 08:58:03PM +0200, Marc Millas wrote:

within a function, I want to create another function.

You can't create functions inside of functions; same for procedures.

Sure you can:

Yeah. The actual problem here is that Marc is expecting variable
substitution to occur within a utility (DDL) statement, which it
doesn't. The workaround is to build the command as a string and
use EXECUTE, as Adrian illustrated:

EXECUTE 'create function ' || bidule || '() RETURNS void language
plpgsql AS $fnc$ BEGIN END; $fnc$ ';

This is not terribly well explained in the existing docs. I tried
to improve the explanation awhile ago in HEAD:

https://www.postgresql.org/docs/devel/plpgsql-statements.html#PLPGSQL-STATEMENTS-GENERAL-SQL

Oh, I thought he wanted to declare a function inside the function that
could be called only by that function, like private functions in Oracle
packages can do. Yes, you can create a function that defines a function
that can be called later. I guess you could also create a function that
_conditionally_ creates a function that it can call itself too. My
point is that you can't create a function that has function scope ---
they all have schema scope.

--
Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us> https://momjian.us
EDB https://enterprisedb.com

If only the physical world exists, free will is an illusion.