Re: Boolean casting in 7.3 -> changed?

Ian Barwick <barwick(at)gmx(dot)net> writes:
> in 7.3 the following no longer works:
> template1=> select 0::bool;
> ERROR: Cannot cast type integer to boolean

Note that both old and new versions reject
select 0::int4::bool;

I believe the behavioral change is a consequence of Rod Taylor's
DOMAIN patch: it essentially eliminated the old parser_typecast_constant()
routine in order to ensure that constraints associated with a domain
would get applied in examples like "select 0::domaintypename".

I wasn't totally happy with Rod's patch, for reasons that I couldn't put
my finger on at the time, but perhaps my hindbrain understood that there
would be noticeable behavioral changes. But be that as it may, the code
is in there now and is unlikely to get reverted. There isn't any place
in our docs that promises that you can coerce an integer-looking literal
to bool --- and one could argue that allowing such is just opening the
door for typos.

regards, tom lane