Re: VARCHAR to INTEGER conversion

On Wed, 16 Jan 2002, Darren Ferguson wrote:

> I have a stored procedure that takes in an integer
>
> sp_customer_service_property_descr(INTEGER)
>
> However i have a database field that is a VARCHAR because it can take
> either a number that would have to go into this stored procedure or it can
> just have normal text depending on the value of another field.
>
> I tried casting the VARCHAR as an INTEGER postgres (V7.2b4) doesn't let me
> do this. Now i understand why it is not letting me do this however here is
> my question
>
> Does anyone know of a work around so that i can call this function with
> the varchar database field.

If the rows you're working with won't have non-numeric values I think you
can do this by casting through text (varchar->text->integer). If the value
may not be a number that will still fail on those rows.