Postgres 9.5 or later
has array_agg(array expression)
:
array_agg
(anyarray
) →anyarray
Concatenates all the input arrays into an array of one higher
dimension. (The inputs must all have the same dimensionality, and
cannot be empty or null.)
This is a drop-in replacement for my custom aggregate function array_agg_mult()
demonstrated below. It’s implemented in C and considerably faster. Use it.
Postgres 9.4
Use the ROWS FROM
construct or the updated unnest()
which takes multiple arrays to unnest in parallel. Each can have a different length. You get (per documentation):
[…] the number of result rows in this case is that of the largest function
result, with smaller results padded with null values to match.
Use this cleaner and simpler variant:
SELECT ARRAY[a,b] AS ab
FROM unnest('{a,b,c}'::text[]
, '{d,e,f}'::text[]) x(a,b);
Postgres 9.3 or older
Simple zip()
Consider the following demo for Postgres 9.3 or earlier:
SELECT ARRAY[a,b] AS ab
FROM (
SELECT unnest('{a,b,c}'::text[]) AS a
, unnest('{d,e,f}'::text[]) AS b
) x;
Result:
ab
-------
{a,d}
{b,e}
{c,f}
Note that both arrays must have the same number of elements to unnest in parallel, or you get a cross join instead.
You can wrap this into a function, if you want to:
CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION zip(anyarray, anyarray)
RETURNS SETOF anyarray LANGUAGE SQL AS
$func$
SELECT ARRAY[a,b] FROM (SELECT unnest($1) AS a, unnest($2) AS b) x;
$func$;
Call:
SELECT zip('{a,b,c}'::text[],'{d,e,f}'::text[]);
Same result.
zip() to multi-dimensional array:
Now, if you want to aggregate that new set of arrays into one 2-dimenstional array, it gets more complicated.
SELECT ARRAY (SELECT ...)
or:
SELECT array_agg(ARRAY[a,b]) AS ab
FROM (
SELECT unnest('{a,b,c}'::text[]) AS a
,unnest('{d,e,f}'::text[]) AS b
) x
or:
SELECT array_agg(ARRAY[ARRAY[a,b]]) AS ab
FROM ...
will all result in the same error message (tested with pg 9.1.5):
ERROR: could not find array type for data type text[]
But there is a way around this, as we worked out under this closely related question.
Create a custom aggregate function:
CREATE AGGREGATE array_agg_mult (anyarray) (
SFUNC = array_cat
, STYPE = anyarray
, INITCOND = '{}'
);
And use it like this:
SELECT array_agg_mult(ARRAY[ARRAY[a,b]]) AS ab
FROM (
SELECT unnest('{a,b,c}'::text[]) AS a
, unnest('{d,e,f}'::text[]) AS b
) x
Result:
{{a,d},{b,e},{c,f}}
Note the additional ARRAY[]
layer! Without it and just:
SELECT array_agg_mult(ARRAY[a,b]) AS ab
FROM ...
You get:
{a,d,b,e,c,f}
Which may be useful for other purposes.
Roll another function:
CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION zip2(anyarray, anyarray)
RETURNS SETOF anyarray LANGUAGE SQL AS
$func$
SELECT array_agg_mult(ARRAY[ARRAY[a,b]])
FROM (SELECT unnest($1) AS a, unnest($2) AS b) x;
$func$;
Call:
SELECT zip2('{a,b,c}'::text[],'{d,e,f}'::text[]); -- or any other array type
Result:
{{a,d},{b,e},{c,f}}