ERROR: invalid input syntax for integer: "" - more confusion

G'day again,

inconceivably, on a completely different issue, I've run into the above error again - this time on both machines, one running 9.1.6, and the other running 9.1.7.

This time, I have a table with locations, some states (level = 1) and some shires (level = 2). level is defined as an integer type (no Modifiers or indexes)

The distribution of these values is best shown by :

SELECT level, count(*) FROM locations GROUP BY level ORDER BY level;
level | count
-------+-------
1 | 18
2 | 876
(2 rows)

If I run this query :

SELECT l.id, l.location, l.abbrev, l.locationcode
FROM locations l
WHERE l.level = 2
ORDER BY split_part(locationcode, '.', 1)::int, split_part(locationcode, '.', 2)::int;

I get many hundreds of results in the correct order. If I change the level to 1:

SELECT l.id, l.location, l.abbrev, l.locationcode
FROM locations l
WHERE l.level = 1
ORDER BY split_part(locationcode, '.', 1)::int, split_part(locationcode, '.', 2)::int;

I get:

ERROR: invalid input syntax for integer: ""

even more confusing, if I take away the ORDER BY clause, it works.

Do I have some corruption somewhere?

I have done a dump / reload, any other suggestions?

cheers

Ben

--

Ben Madin

m : +61 448 887 220
e : ben(at)ausvet(dot)com(dot)au