I am a real newbee and I hope this is the right place to post a feature request.
I am receiving data from a csv file where one column has a strange data format. It would be nice if I could use Copy From with to_timestamp to transform the date. As far as I know this is not possible to do in one step (unlike MySQL I believe). I, therefore, have to first read large amounts of CSV data into one table where the data is a char(15) column. Then create another table using: CREATE TABLE T (like tempT);
ALTER TABLE T ALTER COLUMN thedate TYPE TIMESTAMP;
However, then I run into: ERROR: column "thedate" cannot be cast to type "pg_catalog.timestamp"
This error comes even though the table is empty. Could it be an idea to allow this for empty tables? Am I missing something obvious in my unreasonably complicated approach?