mysql delimiter error

Question

Modifed.

DROP FUNCTION IF EXISTS PersonName;
DELIMITER |;

CREATE FUNCTION PersonName( personID SMALLINT )
RETURNS CHAR(20)
BEGIN
  DECLARE pname CHAR         


        

Answer 1

I would remove the semicolon after END.

    ...
END
|
DELIMITER ;

---

Re your comment, you can't use the current delimiter when declaring a new delimiter. That sounds confusing, but consider if you do this:

DELIMITER |;

Now MySQL would think the delimiter is "|;" (two characters, a pipe and a semicolon). If you think about it, DELIMITER must be treated in a special way by the MySQL client. It's the only statement that can't be followed by the current delimiter.

So when setting the delimiter to pipe, do this:

DELIMITER |

When setting it back to semicolon, do this:

DELIMITER ;

---

FWIW, I ran the following with no error on my local test database on MySQL 5.0.75:

DROP FUNCTION IF EXISTS PersonName;
DELIMITER |

CREATE FUNCTION PersonName( personID SMALLINT )
RETURNS CHAR(20)
BEGIN
  DECLARE pname CHAR(20) DEFAULT '';
  SELECT name INTO pname FROM family WHERE ID=personID;
  RETURN pname;
END
|
DELIMITER ;

Answer 2

In your last line where you're restoring the delimiter to semicolon you need a space between DELIMITER and ; i.e.

DELIMITER ;