[GENERAL] basic trigger using OLD not working?

[Rick Casey]

Hello all,
I am trying to a simple thing: create a log history of deletes, and 
updates; but which I am having trouble getting to work in PG 7.4.7 
(under Debian Linux 2.6.8).

I have reduced my code to the following trivial case:
Here is the code that creates the delete trigger:
create trigger PEDIGREES_hist_del_trig
AFTER DELETE
on PEDIGREES
EXECUTE PROCEDURE logPedigreesDel();
Here is the trigger code: (famindid is an integer field in the Pedigrees 
table):

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION logPedigreesDel() RETURNS TRIGGER AS '
DECLARE
   test integer;
begin
   test := OLD.famindid;
   RAISE EXCEPTION ''OLD.famindid = '', test;
   return OLD;
end;
' LANGUAGE plpgsql;
Here is the error message returned:
psql:testphdtrig.sql:1: ERROR:  record "old" is not assigned yet
DETAIL:  The tuple structure of a not-yet-assigned record is indeterminate.
CONTEXT:  PL/pgSQL function "logpedigreesdel" line 4 at assignment
Would *really appreciate* any suggestions! This could help us decide 
whether to PostGres for a major project...

thanks --rick
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