Message-ID: <20030131154041.19708.qmail@web20101.mail.yahoo.com>
Date: Fri, 31 Jan 2003 07:40:41 -0800 (PST)
From: "joe.guyot" <yusufguyot@yahoo.com>
Subject: how do i create a date from a substring???
To: pgsql-sql@postgresql.org
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

greetings all!

[i just became a member]

i have a  string data from a view that is a packed field. it
contains a date, a time and a user's initials. i'm trying to extract
the date portion in a pg 7 view. the data originally came from a ms
sql 7 table that has since been converted into a pg 7 table.

in the ms sql 7 view the date was extracted  as follows:

    convert(timestamp, substring(creat, 1, 8), 120) = 'createdate'

where creat is the packed field from the original table and
'createdate' is the extracted date portion. the data would typically
look like: 200111171623XYX. the result is '2001-11-17'.

i've reviewed documentation, on line books and several threads in
this and related newsgroups and can't seem to come up with a  decent
solution.

i've tried various combinations of this in a pg 7 view:

    to_date(substr(creat,1,8),'YYYY-MM-DD') = 'createdate'
    to_date(substring(creat from 1 for 8),'YYYY-MM-DD') =
'createdate'
    to_timestamp(substr(creat,1,8),'YYYY-MM-DD') = 'createdate'
    to_timestamp(substrsting(creat from 1 for 8),'YYYY-MM-DD') =
'createdate'

and continually get different errors:
    "bad date external representation 'createdate'"
or
    "bad timestamp external representation 'createdate'"

i'm sure this has an obvious solution but i can't seem to find it.
any suggestions are appreciated.


regards,
yusuf

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