Thread: Change column type

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On Mon, 17 Mar 2003, Oleg Lebedev wrote:

> I want to change a column type from VARCHAR to BIGINT. All values
> currently stored in the column are integers. Saving column data,
> recreating the column and restoring data seems to be too convoluted.
> Besides, I have multiple constraints declared on this column, which I
> will have to recreate once the column is dropped. I wonder if the
> easiest way to do this would be just to change the atttypid in
> pg_attribute?

I doubt it.  bigint and varchar() don't get stored the same, so I think
that'd only corrupt your table.

> I also wonder why it is possible to declare an FK constraint on a column
> of type VARCHAR to reference a PK column of type BIGINT?

The types are considered comparable since you can do an equality
comparison on them.