Intersection of array with select statement in postgres

Question

I am trying to do an intersect of a select statement with an array that is dynamically computed in a loop and then measure the time taken for each of those intersect queries.

So in the first iteration of the loop, I want the query to be like this:

'select sub_id from table where main_id=1 INTERSECT select array[''80'']';

In the second iteration:

'select sub_id from table where main_id=1 INTERSECT select array[''80'', ''81'']';

and so on and measure the time taken in each of those iterations to execute the query.

When I run this script, I get the error:

CONTEXT: PL/pgSQL function inline_code_block at assignment

which corresponds to the line where I initialize query1. How do I correct the assignment to the query1? I am using PostgreSQL 9.1.

arr := '{}';
for j in 80..120 loop
  arr := array_append(arr, j::text);
  query1 := 'select sub_id from table where main_id=1 INTERSECT' || ' select unnest(arr)';
  execute 'explain (analyse, format json) ' || query1 into p;
  t := (p->0->>'Planning Time')::float + (p->0->>'Execution Time')::float;
  total_time := total_time + t;
end loop;

Answer 1

The query text you execute can't reference variables from the calling scope. You have to pass the variable as a parameter with using like:

query1 := 'select sub_id from YourTable where main_id=1 INTERSECT select unnest($1)';
execute 'explain (analyse, format json) ' || query1 using arr into p;
                                                    ^^^^^^^^^

Working example at rextester.com