Function for dealing with xlog data

Currently, a number of functions return data in a really
calculation-unfriendly format, e.g:

postgres=# select * from pg_current_xlog_location();
pg_current_xlog_location
--------------------------
0/3013158
(1 row)

It would be very useful to have a way to convert this to a bigint - so
we can do differences between different values easily. And it's AFAIUI
easily converted to a 64-bit integer.

Would others find this useful as well?

What's the best way of doing it? Should we have a function that takes
text as input, or should the functions in question be made to return a
new datatype that could then be casted?

--
 Magnus Hagander
 Me: http://www.hagander.net/
 Work: http://www.redpill-linpro.com/