Am Dienstag 24 Juli 2007 schrieb Tom Lane:
> > I thought the
> > to_char/to_date/to_timestamp functions were intented for this purposes
>
> No, they're intended for dealing with wacky formats that the regular
> input/output routines can't understand or produce.
Really? I use them alot, because of possible problems with different date
formats. 20070503 means May 3, 2007 for germans, I don't know what it means
to US citizens, but following the strange logic of having the month first
(8/13/2005) it might mean March 5, 2007 too. Therefore, using to_timestamp
seems to be a safe choice for me, working in any environment regardless of
the "date_style" setting.