Re: SELECTing from a function where i don't want the results

On Tuesday, July 7, 2020, Wells Oliver <wells(dot)oliver(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:

> Vanilla SQL script calls a plpgsql function to delete some number of rows
> from three tables:
>
> SELECT mydelete(r) FROM sometable;
>
> Where sometable contains maybe 100+ records. This causes the results from
> the function (integer of number of rows removed) to be displayed in the
> output, like you'd kinda expect with a SELECT call, except I don't want to
> see it all, I just want the function quietly executed and rows removed.
>
> Can I accomplish this?
>
>
Pure SQL, no, you cannot just ignore the output. You can perform
post-processing (via CTE/WITH) to reduce how much is printed (aggregates).
If you are using psql you can send it to /dev/null. You could use a DO
block and (kinda) ignore the result (SQL) and/or stick it into a throw-away
variable (plpgsql).

David J.