38000ERRORTier 2 — Caution✅ HIGH confidence

external routine exception

Category: External Routine ExceptionVersions: All Postgres versions

What this means

SQLSTATE 38000 is the generic external routine exception code raised when an error occurs in a function or procedure written in an external programming language (C, PL/v8, PL/Python, PL/Perl, etc.) that does not map to a more specific 38xxx subcode.

Why it happens

1An unhandled exception in a C extension function, PL/Python, PL/Perl, or other external language function

How to reproduce

Error in a PL/Python function.

trigger — this will ERROR

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION bad_py() RETURNS VOID AS $
raise ValueError("something went wrong")
$ LANGUAGE plpython3u;

SELECT bad_py();

ERROR: ValueError: something went wrong

Fix 1: Handle exceptions in the external language function

When a PL/Python, PL/Perl, or C extension function raises 38000.

fix

Why this works

Add try/except (Python), eval{} (Perl), or PG_TRY/PG_CATCH (C) to handle errors gracefully within the function body and raise a Postgres error with a meaningful SQLSTATE.

Sources

📚 Official docs: https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/errcodes-appendix.html

🔧 Source ref: Class 38 — External Routine Exception

Confidence assessment

✅ HIGH confidence

Standard SQLSTATE. Stable across versions.