I'm trying to interpret strings of Y's and N's as bit vectors and perform bitwise ops on them. It's not working: ========beginning of output============================= test=# select version (); version ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- PostgreSQL 8.0.3 on i686-pc-linux-gnu, compiled by GCC gcc (GCC) 3.2.3 20030502 (Red Hat Linux 3.2.3-49) (1 row) test=# select translate ('YNNY', 'YN', '10')::bit varying & translate ('NYYN', 'YN', '10')::bit varying; ERROR: cannot cast type text to bit varying ========end of output============================= It's curious to me that the following is fine: ========beginning of output============================= test=# select '1001'::bit varying; varbit -------- 1001 (1 row) ========end of output============================= As what data type is the literal '1001' being treated, that it can be cast to bit varying, while text data (e.g. the result of "translate") cannot be so cast? ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 3: if posting/reading through Usenet, please send an appropriate subscribe-nomail command to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx so that your message can get through to the mailing list cleanly