Re: PG 7.2 varchar change

Quoth slane(at)moyergroup(dot)com (slane):
> Hello all:
>
> I am upgrading a web application from postgres 7.1.2 to 7.4.3 (too long in
> coming to that point, I know).
>
> I have sifted through the history files and identified a restricted number
> of changes that potentially impact the app, a few of which I don¹t
> understand.
>
> Here¹s the currently most alarming, a change that is recorded for 7.2:
>
> CHAR(), VARCHAR() now reject strings that are too long (Peter E)

Consider this example:

tutorial=# create table test_string (f1 varchar, f2 varchar(10));
CREATE TABLE
tutorial=# insert into test_string (f1, f2) values ('abc', 'def');
INSERT 2623360 1
tutorial=# insert into test_string (f1, f2) values ('abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz', 'def');
INSERT 2623361 1
tutorial=# insert into test_string (f1, f2) values ('abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz', 'abcdefghiasdfasdfa');
ERROR: value too long for type character varying(10)

If no maximum length is specified, PostgreSQL is free to stick a
goodly amount of data in the field.

But supposing you decide that a particular column is VARCHAR(10),
trying to stuff more than 10 characters into it will fail, as you see
above.

Doing similar with char:

tutorial=# create table test_chars (f1 char, f2 char(10));
CREATE TABLE
tutorial=# insert into test_chars (f1, f2) values ('abc', 'def');
ERROR: value too long for type character(1)

Does that illustrate what's going on? I hope so...
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