Type Conversion
data type
conversion
SQL statements can, intentionally or not, require
mixing of different data types in the same expression.
PostgreSQL has extensive facilities for
evaluating mixed-type expressions.
In many cases a user will not need
to understand the details of the type conversion mechanism.
However, the implicit conversions done by PostgreSQL
can affect the results of a query. When necessary, these results
can be tailored by a user or programmer
using explicit type conversion.
This chapter introduces the PostgreSQL
type conversion mechanisms and conventions.
Refer to the relevant sections in and
for more information on specific data types and allowed functions and
operators.
Overview
SQL is a strongly typed language. That is, every data item
has an associated data type which determines its behavior and allowed usage.
PostgreSQL has an extensible type system that is
much more general and flexible than other SQL implementations.
Hence, most type conversion behavior in PostgreSQL
should be governed by general rules rather than by ad hoc> heuristics, to allow
mixed-type expressions to be meaningful even with user-defined types.
The PostgreSQL scanner/parser decodes lexical
elements into only five fundamental categories: integers, floating-point numbers, strings,
names, and key words. Constants of most non-numeric types are first classified as
strings. The SQL language definition allows specifying type
names with strings, and this mechanism can be used in
PostgreSQL to start the parser down the correct
path. For example, the query
SELECT text 'Origin' AS "label", point '(0,0)' AS "value";
label | value
--------+-------
Origin | (0,0)
(1 row)
has two literal constants, of type text and point.
If a type is not specified for a string literal, then the placeholder type
unknown is assigned initially, to be resolved in later
stages as described below.
There are four fundamental SQL constructs requiring
distinct type conversion rules in the PostgreSQL
parser:
Operators
PostgreSQL allows expressions with
prefix and postfix unary (one-argument) operators,
as well as binary (two-argument) operators.
Function calls
Much of the PostgreSQL type system is built around a
rich set of functions. Function calls can have one or more arguments.
Since PostgreSQL permits function
overloading, the function name alone does not uniquely identify the function
to be called; the parser must select the right function based on the data
types of the supplied arguments.
Value Storage
SQL INSERT and UPDATE statements place the results of
expressions into a table. The expressions in the statement must be matched up
with, and perhaps converted to, the types of the target columns.
UNION, CASE, and ARRAY constructs
Since all query results from a unionized SELECT statement
must appear in a single set of columns, the types of the results of each
SELECT> clause must be matched up and converted to a uniform set.
Similarly, the branch expressions of a CASE> construct must be
converted to a common type so that the CASE> expression as a whole
has a known output type. The same holds for ARRAY> constructs.
The system catalogs store information about which conversions, called
casts, between data types are valid, and how to
perform those conversions. Additional casts can be added by the user
with the CREATE CAST command. (This is usually
done in conjunction with defining new data types. The set of casts
between the built-in types has been carefully crafted and is best not
altered.)
data type
category
An additional heuristic is provided in the parser to allow better guesses
at proper behavior for SQL standard types. There are
several basic type categories defined: boolean,
numeric, string, bitstring, datetime, timespan, geometric, network,
and user-defined. Each category, with the exception of user-defined, has
one or more preferred types which are preferentially
selected when there is ambiguity.
In the user-defined category, each type is its own preferred type.
Ambiguous expressions (those with multiple candidate parsing solutions)
can therefore often be resolved when there are multiple possible built-in types, but
they will raise an error when there are multiple choices for user-defined
types.
All type conversion rules are designed with several principles in mind:
Implicit conversions should never have surprising or unpredictable outcomes.
User-defined types, of which the parser has no a priori> knowledge, should be
higher
in the type hierarchy. In mixed-type expressions, native types shall always
be converted to a user-defined type (of course, only if conversion is necessary).
User-defined types are not related. Currently, PostgreSQL
does not have information available to it on relationships between types, other than
hardcoded heuristics for built-in types and implicit relationships based on
available functions and casts.
There should be no extra overhead from the parser or executor
if a query does not need implicit type conversion.
That is, if a query is well formulated and the types already match up, then the query should proceed
without spending extra time in the parser and without introducing unnecessary implicit conversion
calls into the query.
Additionally, if a query usually requires an implicit conversion for a function, and
if then the user defines a new function with the correct argument types, the parser
should use this new function and will no longer do the implicit conversion using the old function.
Operators
operator
type resolution in an invocation
The specific operator to be used in an operator invocation is determined
by following
the procedure below. Note that this procedure is indirectly affected
by the precedence of the involved operators. See for more information.
Operator Type Resolution
Select the operators to be considered from the
pg_operator system catalog. If an unqualified
operator name was used (the usual case), the operators
considered are those of the right name and argument count that are
visible in the current search path (see ).
If a qualified operator name was given, only operators in the specified
schema are considered.
If the search path finds multiple operators of identical argument types,
only the one appearing earliest in the path is considered. But operators of
different argument types are considered on an equal footing regardless of
search path position.
Check for an operator accepting exactly the input argument types.
If one exists (there can be only one exact match in the set of
operators considered), use it.
If one argument of a binary operator invocation is of the unknown type,
then assume it is the same type as the other argument for this check.
Other cases involving unknown will never find a match at
this step.
Look for the best match.
Discard candidate operators for which the input types do not match
and cannot be converted (using an implicit conversion) to match.
unknown literals are
assumed to be convertible to anything for this purpose. If only one
candidate remains, use it; else continue to the next step.
Run through all candidates and keep those with the most exact matches
on input types. (Domains are considered the same as their base type
for this purpose.) Keep all candidates if none have any exact matches.
If only one candidate remains, use it; else continue to the next step.
Run through all candidates and keep those that accept preferred types (of the
input data type's type category) at the most positions where type conversion
will be required.
Keep all candidates if none accept preferred types.
If only one candidate remains, use it; else continue to the next step.
If any input arguments are unknown, check the type
categories accepted at those argument positions by the remaining
candidates. At each position, select the string category
if any
candidate accepts that category. (This bias towards string is appropriate
since an unknown-type literal does look like a string.) Otherwise, if
all the remaining candidates accept the same type category, select that
category; otherwise fail because the correct choice cannot be deduced
without more clues. Now discard
candidates that do not accept the selected type category. Furthermore,
if any candidate accepts a preferred type at a given argument position,
discard candidates that accept non-preferred types for that argument.
If only one candidate remains, use it. If no candidate or more than one
candidate remains,
then fail.
Some examples follow.
Exponentiation Operator Type Resolution
There is only one exponentiation
operator defined in the catalog, and it takes arguments of type
double precision.
The scanner assigns an initial type of integer to both arguments
of this query expression:
SELECT 2 ^ 3 AS "exp";
exp
-----
8
(1 row)
So the parser does a type conversion on both operands and the query
is equivalent to
SELECT CAST(2 AS double precision) ^ CAST(3 AS double precision) AS "exp";
String Concatenation Operator Type Resolution
A string-like syntax is used for working with string types as well as for
working with complex extension types.
Strings with unspecified type are matched with likely operator candidates.
An example with one unspecified argument:
SELECT text 'abc' || 'def' AS "text and unknown";
text and unknown
------------------
abcdef
(1 row)
In this case the parser looks to see if there is an operator taking text
for both arguments. Since there is, it assumes that the second argument should
be interpreted as of type text.
Here is a concatenation on unspecified types:
SELECT 'abc' || 'def' AS "unspecified";
unspecified
-------------
abcdef
(1 row)
In this case there is no initial hint for which type to use, since no types
are specified in the query. So, the parser looks for all candidate operators
and finds that there are candidates accepting both string-category and
bit-string-category inputs. Since string category is preferred when available,
that category is selected, and then the
preferred type for strings, text, is used as the specific
type to resolve the unknown literals to.
Absolute-Value and Negation Operator Type Resolution
The PostgreSQL operator catalog has several
entries for the prefix operator @>, all of which implement
absolute-value operations for various numeric data types. One of these
entries is for type float8, which is the preferred type in
the numeric category. Therefore, PostgreSQL
will use that entry when faced with a non-numeric input:
SELECT @ '-4.5' AS "abs";
abs
-----
4.5
(1 row)
Here the system has performed an implicit conversion from text to float8
before applying the chosen operator. We can verify that float8 and
not some other type was used:
SELECT @ '-4.5e500' AS "abs";
ERROR: "-4.5e500" is out of range for type double precision
On the other hand, the prefix operator ~> (bitwise negation)
is defined only for integer data types, not for float8. So, if we
try a similar case with ~>, we get:
SELECT ~ '20' AS "negation";
ERROR: operator is not unique: ~ "unknown"
HINT: Could not choose a best candidate operator. You may need to add explicit
type casts.
This happens because the system can't decide which of the several
possible ~> operators should be preferred. We can help
it out with an explicit cast:
SELECT ~ CAST('20' AS int8) AS "negation";
negation
----------
-21
(1 row)
Functions
function
type resolution in an invocation
The specific function to be used in a function invocation is determined
according to the following steps.
Function Type Resolution
Select the functions to be considered from the
pg_proc system catalog. If an unqualified
function name was used, the functions
considered are those of the right name and argument count that are
visible in the current search path (see ).
If a qualified function name was given, only functions in the specified
schema are considered.
If the search path finds multiple functions of identical argument types,
only the one appearing earliest in the path is considered. But functions of
different argument types are considered on an equal footing regardless of
search path position.
Check for a function accepting exactly the input argument types.
If one exists (there can be only one exact match in the set of
functions considered), use it.
(Cases involving unknown will never find a match at
this step.)
If no exact match is found, see whether the function call appears
to be a trivial type conversion request. This happens if the function call
has just one argument and the function name is the same as the (internal)
name of some data type. Furthermore, the function argument must be either
an unknown-type literal or a type that is binary-compatible with the named
data type. When these conditions are met, the function argument is converted
to the named data type without any actual function call.
Look for the best match.
Discard candidate functions for which the input types do not match
and cannot be converted (using an implicit conversion) to match.
unknown literals are
assumed to be convertible to anything for this purpose. If only one
candidate remains, use it; else continue to the next step.
Run through all candidates and keep those with the most exact matches
on input types. (Domains are considered the same as their base type
for this purpose.) Keep all candidates if none have any exact matches.
If only one candidate remains, use it; else continue to the next step.
Run through all candidates and keep those that accept preferred types (of the
input data type's type category) at the most positions where type conversion
will be required.
Keep all candidates if none accept preferred types.
If only one candidate remains, use it; else continue to the next step.
If any input arguments are unknown, check the type categories
accepted
at those argument positions by the remaining candidates. At each position,
select the string category if any candidate accepts that category.
(This bias towards string
is appropriate since an unknown-type literal does look like a string.)
Otherwise, if all the remaining candidates accept the same type category,
select that category; otherwise fail because
the correct choice cannot be deduced without more clues.
Now discard candidates that do not accept the selected type category.
Furthermore, if any candidate accepts a preferred type at a given argument
position, discard candidates that accept non-preferred types for that
argument.
If only one candidate remains, use it. If no candidate or more than one
candidate remains,
then fail.
Note that the best match> rules are identical for operator and
function type resolution.
Some examples follow.
Rounding Function Argument Type Resolution
There is only one round function with two
arguments. (The first is numeric, the second is
integer.) So the following query automatically converts
the first argument of type integer to
numeric:
SELECT round(4, 4);
round
--------
4.0000
(1 row)
That query is actually transformed by the parser to
SELECT round(CAST (4 AS numeric), 4);
Since numeric constants with decimal points are initially assigned the
type numeric, the following query will require no type
conversion and may therefore be slightly more efficient:
SELECT round(4.0, 4);
Substring Function Type Resolution
There are several substr functions, one of which
takes types text and integer. If called
with a string constant of unspecified type, the system chooses the
candidate function that accepts an argument of the preferred category
string (namely of type text).
SELECT substr('1234', 3);
substr
--------
34
(1 row)
If the string is declared to be of type varchar, as might be the case
if it comes from a table, then the parser will try to convert it to become text:
SELECT substr(varchar '1234', 3);
substr
--------
34
(1 row)
This is transformed by the parser to effectively become
SELECT substr(CAST (varchar '1234' AS text), 3);
The parser learns from the pg_cast> catalog that
text and varchar
are binary-compatible, meaning that one can be passed to a function that
accepts the other without doing any physical conversion. Therefore, no
explicit type conversion call is really inserted in this case.
And, if the function is called with an argument of type integer, the parser will
try to convert that to text:
SELECT substr(1234, 3);
substr
--------
34
(1 row)
This actually executes as
SELECT substr(CAST (1234 AS text), 3);
This automatic transformation can succeed because there is an
implicitly invocable cast from integer to
text.
Value Storage
Values to be inserted into a table are converted to the destination
column's data type according to the
following steps.
Value Storage Type Conversion
Check for an exact match with the target.
Otherwise, try to convert the expression to the target type. This will succeed
if there is a registered cast between the two types.
If the expression is an unknown-type literal, the contents of
the literal string will be fed to the input conversion routine for the target
type.
If the target is a fixed-length type (e.g., char or varchar
declared with a length) then try to find a sizing function for the target
type. A sizing function is a function of the same name as the type,
taking two arguments of which the first is that type and the second is of type
integer, and returning the same type. If one is found, it is applied,
passing the column's declared length as the second parameter.
character Storage Type Conversion
For a target column declared as character(20) the following statement
ensures that the stored value is sized correctly:
CREATE TABLE vv (v character(20));
INSERT INTO vv SELECT 'abc' || 'def';
SELECT v, length(v) FROM vv;
v | length
----------------------+--------
abcdef | 20
(1 row)
What has really happened here is that the two unknown literals are resolved
to text by default, allowing the || operator
to be resolved as text concatenation. Then the text
result of the operator is converted to bpchar (blank-padded
char>, the internal name of the character data type) to match the target
column type. (Since the types text and
bpchar are binary-compatible, this conversion does
not insert any real function call.) Finally, the sizing function
bpchar(bpchar, integer) is found in the system catalog
and applied to the operator's result and the stored column length. This
type-specific function performs the required length check and addition of
padding spaces.
UNION, CASE, and ARRAY Constructs
UNION
determination of result type
CASE
determination of result type
ARRAY
determination of result type
SQL UNION> constructs must match up possibly dissimilar
types to become a single result set. The resolution algorithm is
applied separately to each output column of a union query. The
INTERSECT> and EXCEPT> constructs resolve
dissimilar types in the same way as UNION>. The
CASE> and ARRAY> constructs use the identical
algorithm to match up their component expressions and select a result
data type.
UNION, CASE, and
ARRAY Type Resolution
If all inputs are of type unknown, resolve as type
text (the preferred type of the string category).
Otherwise, ignore the unknown inputs while choosing the result type.
If the non-unknown inputs are not all of the same type category, fail.
Choose the first non-unknown input type which is a preferred type in
that category or allows all the non-unknown inputs to be implicitly
converted to it.
Convert all inputs to the selected type.
Some examples follow.
Type Resolution with Underspecified Types in a Union
SELECT text 'a' AS "text" UNION SELECT 'b';
text
------
a
b
(2 rows)
Here, the unknown-type literal 'b' will be resolved as type text.
Type Resolution in a Simple Union
SELECT 1.2 AS "numeric" UNION SELECT 1;
numeric
---------
1
1.2
(2 rows)
The literal 1.2> is of type numeric>,
and the integer value 1> can be cast implicitly to
numeric>, so that type is used.
Type Resolution in a Transposed Union
SELECT 1 AS "real" UNION SELECT CAST('2.2' AS REAL);
real
------
1
2.2
(2 rows)
Here, since type real> cannot be implicitly cast to integer>,
but integer> can be implicitly cast to real>, the union
result type is resolved as real>.