Local Variable Scope and Resolution
The scope of a local variable is the BEGIN ... END
block within which it is declared. The variable can be referred to in blocks nested within the declaring block, except those blocks that declare a variable with the same name.
Local variables are in scope only during stored program execution. References to them are not permitted within prepared statements because those are global to the current session and the variables might have gone out of scope when the statement is executed. For example, SELECT ... INTO
cannot be used as a prepared statement.
local_var
A local variable should not have the same name as a table column. If an SQL statement, such as a SELECT ... INTO
statement, contains a reference to a column and a declared local variable with the same name, MariaDB currently interprets the reference as the name of a variable. Consider the following procedure definition:
CREATE PROCEDURE sp1 (x VARCHAR(5)) BEGIN DECLARE xname VARCHAR(5) DEFAULT 'bob'; DECLARE newname VARCHAR(5); DECLARE xid INT; SELECT xname, id INTO newname, xid FROM table1 WHERE xname = xname; SELECT newname; END;
MySQL interprets xname
in the SELECT
statement as a reference to the xname
variable rather than the xname
column. Consequently, when the procedure sp1()
is called, the newname
variable returns the value 'bob'
regardless of the value of the table1.xname
column.
Similarly, the cursor definition in the following procedure contains a SELECT
statement that refers to xname
. MariaDB interprets this as a reference to the variable of that name rather than a column reference.
CREATE PROCEDURE sp2 (x VARCHAR(5)) BEGIN DECLARE xname VARCHAR(5) DEFAULT 'bob'; DECLARE newname VARCHAR(5); DECLARE xid INT; DECLARE done TINYINT DEFAULT 0; DECLARE cur1 CURSOR FOR SELECT xname, id FROM table1; DECLARE CONTINUE HANDLER FOR NOT FOUND SET done = 1; OPEN cur1; read_loop: LOOP FETCH FROM cur1 INTO newname, xid; IF done THEN LEAVE read_loop; END IF; SELECT newname; END LOOP; CLOSE cur1; END;
See also "Restrictions on Stored Programs".