Re: Accommodating alternative column values

Check this out
https://www.postgresql.org/docs/16/arrays.html#ARRAYS-INPUT

You can use
('{' || email || '}')::varchar(64)[]

or the syntax I suggested earlier.

On Wed, Jul 3, 2024 at 4:13 PM Rich Shepard <rshepard(at)appl-ecosys(dot)com>
wrote:

> 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
>
>
>