On Jul 16, 2007, at 11:36 AM, Michael Nolan wrote:
I have data (from an external source) which is in text format as a hex number (it's actually an IP address, but that's probably not relevant.)
It likely is relevant, as it means it's a 32 bit unsigned integer, which isn't something postgresql supports. Depending on what you need you might want to look at using 32 bit signed, with a 2^31 offset, 64 bit signed, inet or ip4 (which is on pgfoundry, not built-in).
to_hex gets from integer to hex, I can cast a hex constant to integer (ie x'12a7'31'::int, but how do I get a database column from string/hex to integer?
Last time I checked the suggested way to do this was with a plpgsql function that dynamically creates the cast and does it with exec. Google for postgresql and hex and you can likely find sample code.
Cheers, Steve
