Follow-up: My initial question was about oddly-formatted date/times. The suggested solution of casting directly to timestamp with ::timestamp is not as flexible as the to_timestamp function that I was trying to avoid. For example, this fails because of the day-before-month format: SELECT ('18.09.2015 18:01:40')::timestamp --ERROR: date/time field value out of range whereas this works, but results in a timestamp *with* time zone that makes assumptions about daylight savings times: SELECT to_timestamp('18.09.2015 18:01:40','DD.MM.YYYY HH24:MI:SS') I ended up with this simple solution, which does what I wanted to and avoids time zones: SELECT (to_date('18.09.2015','DD.MM.YYYY') ||' '||'18:01:40')::timestamp Adrian: thanks for your observation about wildlife-human interactions -- that is a useful reminder since I'll be looking at traffic patterns. -- View this message in context: http://postgresql.nabble.com/to-timestamp-alternatives-tp5879723p5879753.html Sent from the PostgreSQL - general mailing list archive at Nabble.com. -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general