Re: Verifying data type

=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Elieser_Le=E3o?= <elieser(at)nho(dot)com(dot)br> writes:
> I need to verify if the data in p_valor is just number or it is a string.
> What is the best way to do this?

In PG 8.0 you can just do it exactly the way your Oracle original does,
viz try to cram it into a numeric variable and catch the exception if
any.

In earlier versions, my thoughts would run to some kind of string
matching test using a regular expression.

The regexp method is probably significantly faster though, so maybe you
want to do it anyway, especially if you don't need the full generality
of possible floating-point formats. You might get away with something
as simple as "p_valor ~ '^[0-9]+$'" if you only care about unsigned
integer inputs.

regards, tom lane