Tom Lane wrote:

But postgres 7 rejects this with "ERROR:  cannot cast type character 
varying to integer".


As a general rule, you need to be more specific than that about which
version you are working with ;-)

You may find that username::text::integer will work, depending on which
7.x this actually is.

			regards, tom lane

Oooh, I'd be so happy to. But I don't know. Yes, I don't know.

I know which version of "psql" is installed on my local machine, but the actual database is remote. Is there a command to get the server version? As close as I can find is:

stage=> \copyright
PostgreSQL Data Base Management System

Portions Copyright (c) 1996-2001, PostgreSQL Global Development Group

-Bryce

PS: If it's a hint, "select username from eg_member order by username::text::integer" works fine. Thanks.