> Now I'm testing connectby() in the /contrib/tablefunc in 7.3b1, which would

> Now I'm testing connectby()  in the /contrib/tablefunc in 7.3b1, which would
> be a useful function for many users.   However, I found the fact that
> if connectby_tree has the following data, connectby() tries to search the end
> of roots without knowing that the relations are infinite(-5-9-10-11-9-10-11-)
.
> I hope connectby() supports a check routine to find infinite relations.
>
>
> CREATE TABLE connectby_tree(keyid int, parent_keyid int);
> INSERT INTO connectby_tree VALUES(1,NULL);
> INSERT INTO connectby_tree VALUES(2,1);
> INSERT INTO connectby_tree VALUES(3,1);
> INSERT INTO connectby_tree VALUES(4,2);
> INSERT INTO connectby_tree VALUES(5,2);
> INSERT INTO connectby_tree VALUES(6,4);
> INSERT INTO connectby_tree VALUES(7,3);
> INSERT INTO connectby_tree VALUES(8,6);
> INSERT INTO connectby_tree VALUES(9,5);
>
> INSERT INTO connectby_tree VALUES(10,9);
> INSERT INTO connectby_tree VALUES(11,10);
> INSERT INTO connectby_tree VALUES(9,11);    <-- infinite
>

The attached patch fixes the infinite recursion bug in
contrib/tablefunc/tablefunc.c:connectby found by Masaru Sugawara.

test=# SELECT * FROM connectby('connectby_tree', 'keyid',
'parent_keyid', '2', 4, '~') AS t(keyid int, parent_keyid int, level
int, branch text);
  keyid | parent_keyid | level |   branch
-------+--------------+-------+-------------
      2 |              |     0 | 2
      4 |            2 |     1 | 2~4
      6 |            4 |     2 | 2~4~6
      8 |            6 |     3 | 2~4~6~8
      5 |            2 |     1 | 2~5
      9 |            5 |     2 | 2~5~9
     10 |            9 |     3 | 2~5~9~10
     11 |           10 |     4 | 2~5~9~10~11
(8 rows)

test=# SELECT * FROM connectby('connectby_tree', 'keyid',
'parent_keyid', '2', 5, '~') AS t(keyid int, parent_keyid int, level
int, branch text);
ERROR:  infinite recursion detected

I implemented it by checking the branch string for repeated keys
(whether or not the branch is returned). The performance hit was pretty
minimal -- about 1% for a moderately complex test case (220000 record
table, 9 level tree with 3800 members).

Joe Conway