Revert patch, needs more work:

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Add dynamic record inspection to PL/PgSQL, useful for generic triggers:

  tval2 := r.(cname);

or

  columns := r.(*);

Titus von Boxberg

1 files changed, 1 insertions, 50 deletions

diff --git a/doc/src/sgml/plpgsql.sgml b/doc/src/sgml/plpgsql.sgml
index ecbfb49f1f2..f0cbbf2896c 100644
--- a/doc/src/sgml/plpgsql.sgml
+++ b/doc/src/sgml/plpgsql.sgml
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-<!-- $PostgreSQL: pgsql/doc/src/sgml/plpgsql.sgml,v 1.93 2006/05/30 12:03:12 momjian Exp $ -->
+<!-- $PostgreSQL: pgsql/doc/src/sgml/plpgsql.sgml,v 1.94 2006/05/30 13:40:55 momjian Exp $ -->
 
 <chapter id="plpgsql"> 
   <title><application>PL/pgSQL</application> - <acronym>SQL</acronym> Procedural Language</title>
@@ -880,55 +880,6 @@ SELECT merge_fields(t.*) FROM table1 t WHERE ... ;
    </para>
 
    <para>
-    To obtain the values of the fields the record is made up of,
-    the record variable can be qualified with the column or field
-    name. This can be done either by literally using the column name
-    or the column name for indexing the record can be taken out of a scalar
-    variable. The syntax for this notation is Record_variable.(IndexVariable).
-    To get information about the column field names of the record, 
-    a special expression exists that returns all column names as an array: 
-    RecordVariable.(*) .
-    Thus, the RECORD can be viewed
-    as an associative array that allows for introspection of it's contents.
-    This feature is especially useful for writing generic triggers that
-    operate on records with unknown structure.
-    Here is an example procedure that shows column names and values
-    of the predefined record NEW in a trigger procedure:
-<programlisting>
-
-CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION show_associative_records() RETURNS TRIGGER AS $$
-	DECLARE
-		colname		TEXT;
-		colcontent	TEXT;
-		colnames	TEXT[];
-		coln		INT4;
-		coli		INT4;
-	BEGIN
--- obtain an array with all field names of the record
-		colnames := NEW.(*);
-		RAISE NOTICE 'All column names of test record: %', colnames;
--- show field names and contents of record
-		coli := 1;
-		coln := array_upper(colnames,1);
-		RAISE NOTICE 'Number of columns in NEW: %', coln;
-		FOR coli IN 1 .. coln LOOP
-			colname := colnames[coli];
-			colcontent := NEW.(colname);
-			RAISE NOTICE 'column % of NEW: %', quote_ident(colname), quote_literal(colcontent);
-		END LOOP;
--- Do it with a fixed field name:
--- will have to know the column name
-		RAISE NOTICE 'column someint of NEW: %', quote_literal(NEW.someint);
-		RETURN NULL;
-	END;
-$$ LANGUAGE plpgsql;
---CREATE TABLE test_records (someint INT8, somestring TEXT);
---CREATE TRIGGER tr_test_record BEFORE INSERT ON test_records FOR EACH ROW EXECUTE PROCEDURE show_associative_records();
-
-</programlisting>
-   </para>
-
-   <para>
     Note that <literal>RECORD</> is not a true data type, only a placeholder.
     One should also realize that when a <application>PL/pgSQL</application>
     function is declared to return type <type>record</>, this is not quite the