Different cast behavior of TEXT and VARCHAR - Mailing list pgsql-general

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Hi,

When PREPARing statements, the type guessing machinery seems to behave
differently for VARCHAR and TEXT. Is this intentional?

This is all against PostgreSQL 8.4.5

Illustration:

 |  tomas@floh:~$ psql foo
 => psql (8.4.5)
 => Type "help" for help.
 |
 |  foo=# CREATE TABLE bar (
 |  foo(#   a TEXT,
 |  foo(#   b VARCHAR
 |  foo(# );
 => CREATE TABLE
 |  foo=# PREPARE s1 AS SELECT a, b FROM BAR WHERE a = $1;
 => PREPARE
 |  foo=# PREPARE s1 AS SELECT a, b FROM BAR WHERE b = $1;
 => ERROR:  could not determine data type of parameter $1

In the case of VARCHAR, I get no error if I put the placeholder in
quotes (i.e. '$1').

It's no big issue for me. I'll just switch to TEXT anyway, but it's a
bit surprising :-)

Thanks for any insights

Regards
- -- tomás
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