Change column type to numeric - Mailing list pgsql-general

From Jake Franklin
Subject Change column type to numeric
Date
Msg-id 82b3cc200802101037u691b0d31x38f2b2533ab0fc@mail.gmail.com
Whole thread Raw
Responses Re: Change column type to numeric
List pgsql-general
Forgive me if this question has an obvious answer, I'm sorta new to posgresql.

I have a table that's already populated with quite a bit of records.
I'd like to alter a column called "amount" from character varying to
numeric, so I don't have to re-load all of my data sets.

I've already dropped the column default.  When attempting to change
the column type, I get:

test=# alter table foo alter column amount type numeric(10,2) USING
cast(amount AS numeric);
ERROR:  invalid input syntax for type numeric: ""

I'm assuming that it's trying to cast a blank value as numeric and
failing.  Does anyone know of an easy way to work around this?

Thanks!

--Jake

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