Re: Blank, nullable date column rejected by psql

On Tue, 12 Feb 2019, Laurenz Albe wrote:

> If you insert a string into a "date" column, PostgreSQL will try to
> convert the string to a date with the type input function. The type input
> function fails on an empty string, since it cannot parse it into a valid
> "date" value. This also applies to the empty string.

Laurenz,

All my previous databases with date columns were required to have an entry
because each row contatined spatio-temporal sampling data. The table in this
business-oriented application is not required to have a next_contact date
and (the crucial point) is that I conflated date values with string values.
As you wrote, a date column is converted from the entered string to a
non-string date type and requires an explicit null when there is no value to
be stored for that column.

Thanks very much,

Rich