Sam Mason <sam@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes: > I have a large problem understanding the real purpose casts so maybe I'm > missing something. My problem is that I don't understand the purpose > of trying to provide a "standard" way of converting between arbitrary > datatypes, I think the reason CREATE CAST exists is exactly that the cast mechanism *isn't* intended to provide conversions between any arbitrary pair of datatypes. It's only intended to provide conversions in those cases where the conversion semantics are obvious to some degree or other. Since that's somewhat in the eye of the beholder, we allow the user to adjust edge cases by creating/removing casts --- but there's no expectation that when you define a new datatype, you'll provide casts to or from unrelated types. regards, tom lane -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general
