Re: Casting numeric to text

On Sun, 8 Apr 2001, Peter Eisentraut wrote:

> Hans-Jürgen Schönig writes:
> 
> > Is there any possibility to cast numeric to text in Postgres 7.0.3?
> >
> > shop=# select cast(price as text) from products;
> > ERROR:  Cannot cast type 'numeric' to 'text'
> 
> Use the to_char() function.

When would one want to use cast()?  What is the difference between cast
and :: ?  After a quick look in the documentation I couldn't find
anything..

-Cedar