"Rick Gigger" <rick(at)alpinenetworking(dot)com> writes:
> insert into bugtest (a) select '1' union select '1'; -- this one fails
> Is this a bug?
No. It's unfortunate perhaps, but it's not a bug. The UNION forces us
to make a decision about the output datatype of the UNION operation.
In your other cases the chosen datatype is integer, which can later be
cast to smallint for the insert, but in this case the chosen datatype is
text, which is not implicitly castable to smallint.
regards, tom lane