Re: issue with an assembled date field

Martin Gainty wrote:
>
>> Chris Bowlby wrote:
>>> Hi All,
>>>
>>> I am currently running into an issue with a query and would like to get
>>> some assistance if possible.
>>>
>>> The PostgreSQL version I am running is 8.0.11 64-Bit, under SuSE Linux
>>> Enterprise Server 9 SP3
>>>
>>> I am converting an encoded field (lot_id) into a date field, the 5
>>> character of every lot_id is always the year and as such I need to
>>> extract the year using the following function:
>>>
>>> substring(ilch.lot_id::text, 5, 1)
>>>
>>> I am not worried about month or day as it is not used in what I need to
>>> do, which is why I am using '01/01' for my main concatenation:
>>>
>>> '01/01/0'::text || ...
>>>
>> You're going to have another problem in about 22 months.
>>
> Brian is right
>
> change substring(ilch.lot_id::text, 5, 1) and
> change '01/01/0'::text ||
>
> to
> '01/01/'::text || substring(ilch.lot_id::text,4,2)

That's not quite it. The data contain just the last digit of the year,
not the last 2. So, unless the data itself is changed, there will still
be a bit of a headache developing in 22 months time.

In any case, as i said also, the syntax is incorrect:

substr(ilch.lot_id::text, 5, 1)

or:

substring(ilch.lot_id::text FROM 5 FOR 1)

b