Re: is there an immutable function to switch from date to character?

Celia McInnis <celia(dot)mcinnis(at)gmail(dot)com> writes:
> create temporary table junk as select now()::date as evtdate;
> alter table junk add column chardate text GENERATED ALWAYS AS
> (to_char(evtdate,'YYYY-Mon-DD')) STORED;

> ERROR: generation expression is not immutable

Probably not; I think all the available conversion functions
respond to some combination of datestyle, lc_time, and timezone
settings. (Type date doesn't depend on timezone, but that keeps you
from using anything that shares functionality with timestamptz ...
and your to_char call promotes the date to timestamptz.)

I find your example not terribly compelling. Why expend storage
space on such a column?

If you're bound and determined to do it, writing a wrapper
function that's labeled immutable should work:

=# create function mytochar(date) returns text
strict immutable parallel safe
as $$ begin return to_char($1::timestamp, 'YYYY-Mon-DD'); end $$
language plpgsql;
CREATE FUNCTION
=# alter table junk add column chardate text GENERATED ALWAYS AS
(mytochar(evtdate)) STORED;
ALTER TABLE

It's on you to be sure that the function actually is immutable,
or at least immutable enough for your use-case. I believe my
example is pretty safe: neither datestyle nor timezone should
affect the timestamp-without-timezone variant of to_char(),
and this particular format string doesn't depend on lc_time.

regards, tom lane