On Fri, Dec 14, 2012 at 9:52 AM, joshua <jzuellig@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Tom- > My apologies, I'm still somewhat new to this. Specifically, I'm dealing with > COPY FROM CSV. I had assumed that since a csv is essentially a pile of text > and COPY FROM is smart enough to interpret all sorts of csv entries into > postgresql data types that if I wanted to allow a nonstandard conversion, > I'd have to define some sort of cast to allow COPY FROM to interpret, say > ...,green,... as {'green}. > > Merlin- > I could set this up to use a staging table, but honestly, given our systems, > it'd be easier for me to change all of our source csv's to simply read > ...,{abc},... instead of ...,abc,... than to change our code base to use a > series of staging tables (we will be using brackets in the future; this is > more of a backwards compatibility issue). Especially since it currently > doesn't have to inspect the target data type of columns we load up, it > simply allows the COPY FROM command to do all of the interpreting which > brings me back to my original point. :) If input csv doesn't match your destination structure, then staging the input to a temporary work table and processing the transformation with a query is really the way to go. Hacking casts is about as ugly as it gets. merlin -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general