Re: Field with character varying (255)

On Mon, Apr 26, 2004 at 12:48:43 -0400,
  "Christopher A. Goodfellow" <cgoodfellow@tealuxe.com> wrote:
> I have a table with a field set to character varying (255).  When an insert
> is executed with a value for this field greater than 255 characters, an
> error is generated rather than the input being truncated as stated in the
> postgresql docs.

Are you using an explicit cast? An implicit cast will return an error,
but an explicit cast should silently truncate the string.
This example is in a 7.4.2+ database:
bruno=> create table test3 (col varchar(3));
CREATE TABLE
bruno=> insert into test3 values ('1234');
ERROR:  value too long for type character varying(3)
bruno=> insert into test3 values ('1234'::varchar(3));
INSERT 1242541 1
bruno=> select * from test3;
 col
-----
 123
(1 row)