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Date: Mon, 6 Oct 2003 11:56:09 -0500
From: Bruno Wolff III <bruno@wolff.to>
To: Chris Faulkner <chrisf@oramap.com>
Cc: Pgsql-Sql <pgsql-sql@postgresql.org>
Subject: Re: create new field
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On Mon, Oct 06, 2003 at 17:35:11 +0100,
  Chris Faulkner <chrisf@oramap.com> wrote:
> 
> OK - so I tried casting.
> 
> template1=# update tab set new_col = "OLD_COL"::int4;
> ERROR:  Cannot cast type character to integer
> 
> I understand this - some tables might have characters in the varchar but how
> to get around it in my case ? I know that my character field has only
> integers in it ?

You want to use to_number to do the conversion.