Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com> writes:
> On Tue, Aug 28, 2012 at 1:06 PM, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
>> Also, right at the moment it's not clear to me whether there are any
>> other cases besides integer literal vs smallint argument. I think
>> that's the only particularly surprising case within the numeric
>> hierarchy --- and for non-numeric types, the literal is generally going
>> to start out "unknown" so the whole problem doesn't arise. I feel
>> uncomfortable trying to invent general-purpose solutions to problems
>> we have only one instance of ...
> The other case that comes up regularly is someone trying to pass some
> kind of number to a function such as LPAD(). There is only one LPAD()
> so no ambiguity exists, but PostgreSQL doesn't even see that there's a
> candidate.
There still won't be a candidate for that one, unless you're proposing
to allow explicit-only coercions to be applied implicitly.
regards, tom lane