Re: how to use array with "holes" ?

> initialisation:
>  FOR p_tmp IN SELECT DISTINCT ON(ttc_id) ttc_id FROM ttc_ids
>  LOOP
>   -- get next value for index
>   i = array_upper(p_ttc_ids, 1) + 1; IF i IS NULL THEN i := 0; END IF;
>   --RAISE NOTICE '[%]', i;
>   p_ttc_ids[i] := p_tmp.ttc_id;
>   p_bytes_in[i] := 0;
>   p_bytes_out[i] := 0;
>  END LOOP;
>

This isn't well style for plpgsql. It's slow for bigger arrays.

create or replace function filltest1(int) returns void as $$
declare a int[];
begin
  for i in 1..$1 loop
    a[i] := 0;
  end loop;
end; $$ language plpgsql;

-- with trick, its necessary for $1> 8000
create or replace function filltest2(int) returns void as $$
declare a int[];
begin
  a := case $1 when 0 then '{}' when 1 then '{0}' else
'{0'||repeat(',0', $1-1) || '}' end;
end; $$ language plpgsql;

filltest2 is more cryptographic , but is 10-20% faster and for
sizeof(a) > ~ 8000 is 30x faster. If you now max size of array you can
do:

declare a int[] = '{0,0,0,0..........}'; b int[] = '{....}'

every array update generates new version of array -> update is more
expensive than you can know from classic languages.