pgsql return table ERROR: column reference is ambiguous

Question

I keep getting this ERROR: column reference "person" is ambiguous.

It is required of me to return a TABLE (person integer). It works fine when I use SETOF integer but in this instance it doesn't work. My other function recurse() returns a set of integers perfectly well.

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION try(_group text) RETURNS TABLE (person integer) AS $$ 
DECLARE
     _init_id integer;
     _record integer;
BEGIN
     SELECT id INTO _init_id FROM egroups WHERE name = _group;

    FOR _record in SELECT person FROM egroupdata WHERE egroup IN (SELECT recurse(_init_id))
    LOOP
        RETURN NEXT;
    END LOOP;

END;
$$ language plpgsql stable;

Solution

Ambiguous column references are due to there being more than one column available of the same name. In this case I guess it's a quirk of returning a table. Try changing the query to:

SELECT egroupdata.person FROM egroupdata WHERE egroup IN (SELECT recurse(_init_id))

This will disambiguate the column reference.