Don Baccus <dhog...@pacifier.com> writes: >> A hierarchy like the following is perfectly logical: >> - 0000 to 0999 :: Cash accounts [1] > > Your example is actually a good argument for storing account ids as > text, because '0000' like '0%' *will* match.
FWIW, I too think that if you want to process your integers as text for some operations (LIKE) and as integer for some others, you'd better do the casting explicitly. In the worked-out example Christopher has been proposing, just alter the column type to text and be done, I can't see summing up or whatever int arithmetic usage being done on those general ledger account numbers. Use a domain (well a CHECK constraint really) to tight things down. As for lpad(), that's a function working on text that returns text, so having a variant that accepts integers would not be confusing. Then again, why aren't you using to_char() if processing integers? Regards, -- Dimitri Fontaine http://2ndQuadrant.fr PostgreSQL : Expertise, Formation et Support PS: having worked on telephone number prefix indexing and processing them as text, I might have a biased opinion. You don't add up phone numbers, though, do you? -- Sent via pgsql-hackers mailing list (pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-hackers
