Re: problem casting varchar to inet

On Fri, Jul 22, 2005 at 02:20:31PM +0200, Roman Neuhauser wrote:
>
> select cast(coalesce(nullif('', trim(callingip)), '127.0.0.1') as inet)
>
> ERROR:  invalid input syntax for type inet: ""
>
>     what is it trying to tell me?

NULLIF returns the first argument if the arguments aren't equal,
so in this case if they aren't equal then NULLIF returns ''.  COALESCE
then returns '' because its first argument isn't NULL, and that
value is then cast to inet and fails.  Try reversing the order of
arguments to NULLIF:

select cast(coalesce(nullif(trim(callingip), ''), '127.0.0.1') as inet);

--
Michael Fuhr
http://www.fuhr.org/~mfuhr/