Re: Accommodating alternative column values

On Wed, 3 Jul 2024, David G. Johnston wrote:

> Yeah, the simply cast suggested will not work. You’d have to apply an
> expression that turns the current contents into an array. The current
> contents are not likely to be an array literal.

David,

No, it's not now an array.

I thought that this expression would work, but it doesn't:
bustrac=# alter table people alter column email set data type varchar(64)[] using email::varchar(64)[];
RROR: malformed array literal: "frank(at)dmipx(dot)com"
DETAIL: Array value must start with "{" or dimension information.

If I correctly understand the error detail I'd need to change the contents
of that column for all 1280 rows to enclose the contents in curly braces
before I can convert the datatype to an array. Is that correct?

Rich