Hello, Some databases such as SQLServer (try_cast) or BigQuery (safe.cast) offer not-throw conversion. In general, these tend to perform better than custom UDFs that catch exceptions and are also simpler to use. For example, in Postgres, I have a function that does the following:
CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION toFloat(str varchar, val real) RETURNS real AS $$ BEGIN RETURN case when str is null then val else str::real end; EXCEPTION WHEN OTHERS THEN RETURN val; END; $$ LANGUAGE plpgsql COST 1 IMMUTABLE; I couldn't find a reference to such capabilities in Postgres and wondered if I missed it, and if not, is there any plan to add such a feature? Thank you! Laurent Hasson.
