From: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
To: "Ian R. Campbell" <ian.campbell@thepathcentral.com>
cc: pgsql-bugs@lists.postgresql.org
Subject: Re: Inconsistent cast to "char"
In-reply-to: <2120116.1638473263@sss.pgh.pa.us>
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Comments: In-reply-to Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
	message dated "Thu, 02 Dec 2021 14:27:43 -0500"
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Date: Thu, 02 Dec 2021 16:31:23 -0500
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I wrote:
> To be clear, the change I'm thinking of would result in errors, not in
> silently applying the int4 cast.  As a quick-n-dirty test:

> regression=# update pg_type set typcategory = 'x' where typname = 'char';
> UPDATE 1
> regression=# select 1::int8::"char", 1::int4::"char", 1::int2::"char";
> ERROR:  cannot cast type bigint to "char"
> LINE 1: select 1::int8::"char", 1::int4::"char", 1::int2::"char";
>                       ^

It turns out that changing the typcategory does have some undesirable
side-effects, but I found another possible workaround.  Patch
posted at [1].

			regards, tom lane

[1] https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/2216388.1638480141%40sss.pgh.pa.us