At 2012-10-17 09:56:22 -0400, t...@sss.pgh.pa.us wrote: > > > Clarify that in the documentation, and also write a test case > > that will prevent us from breaking the rule in the future. > > I don't believe this is a good idea in the slightest. Yeah, the > current implementation happens to act like that, but there is no > reason that we should make it guaranteed behavior.
I always thought it *was* guaranteed, and I've encountered code written by other people who were obviously under the same impression: take some strings (e.g. flag names), use "insert … returning id", map the ids back to the names, and use the values in further inserts into other tables ("flag_id foreign key references flags"). I know one could say "returning id, name", but there's certainly code out there that doesn't do this. I personally think the return order should be guaranteed; and if not, then the documentation urgently needs some prominent warnings to tell people that they should not assume this (for any variant of RETURNING). -- Abhijit -- Sent via pgsql-hackers mailing list (pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-hackers