Bug: var_is_nonnullable() gives wrong results for old/new in RETURNING

SATYANARAYANA NARLAPURAM <satyanarlapuram@gmail.com>

From: SATYANARAYANA NARLAPURAM <satyanarlapuram@gmail.com>
To: PostgreSQL-development <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>, PostgreSQL Hackers <pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org>
Date: 2026-04-09T18:43:09Z
Lists: pgsql-hackers

Attachments

Hi hackers,

It appears the optimizer incorrectly simplifies old.<col> IS NULL to FALSE
in RETURNING clauses when the underlying column has a NOT NULL constraint.

The issue is that var_is_nonnullable() in clauses.c doesn't check
Var.varreturningtype. It sees a NOT NULL column and concludes the Var can
never be NULL.
But this assumption is wrong for old.* and new.* references. Because the
old tuple doesn't exist on INSERT, and the new tuple doesn't exist on
DELETE
I am not super familiar with this area, so I attempted to fix this as in
the patch attached.

Repro:

postgres=# CREATE TABLE t (id INT NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY, val INT);
INSERT INTO t VALUES (1, 10);

MERGE INTO t
USING (VALUES (1, 99), (2, 50)) AS s(id, val) ON t.id = s.id
WHEN MATCHED THEN UPDATE SET val = s.val
WHEN NOT MATCHED THEN INSERT VALUES (s.id, s.val)
RETURNING merge_action(),
          old.id IS NULL AS is_new_row;
CREATE TABLE
INSERT 0 1

 merge_action | is_new_row
--------------+------------
 UPDATE       | f
 INSERT       | f  -- (this should be true)
(2 rows)

MERGE 2


Thanks,
Satya

Commits

Same data as JSON: GET /api/v1/messages/:b64id/commits the thread's linked commits as JSON, with link sources. API reference →
  1. Fix var_is_nonnullable() to account for varreturningtype