On Mon, 2008-07-07 at 02:10 -0400, Lew wrote: > Ow Mun Heng wrote: > >> I want to change a column type from varchar(4) to varchar(5) or should I > >> just use text instead. > The choice of TEXT for the column would seem to be supported in the PG manual, > which stresses that TEXT and VARCHAR are quite close in performance, if not > identical. I recommend to constrain the length if it's proper for the data > domain. That is, if you are 100% absolutely certifiably certain that the > length will never change again once you set it to 5, that is, if the data > domain is a set of values that must be no more than 5 characters long, then > VARCHAR(5) is a good choice. It accurately represents the data. It was varchar(4) for a _long_ time until there came a need recently to move it to a 5 characters. Hence the issue, I've already changed it to varchar() instead to make it more open (and less problematic in the future)
