Re: Change size of varchar(20) field

You could add "-o" option to pg_dump in option (b) to preserve oid's.

At 11:08 AM 2/4/02 -0800, Elaine Lindelef wrote:
>>You can either:
>>
>>a)  create table unittemp as select field1, field2, cast(room as
>>varchar(20)), ..., fieldn from unit;
>>    drop table unit;
>>    alter table unittemp rename to unit;
>>
>>b)  pg_dump -t unit [dbname] > unit.pgsql
>>    edit unit.pgsql and change varchar(20) to varchar(40) and add a line to
>>beginning of file "drop table unit"
>>    pgsql [dbname] < unit.pgsql
>>
>>Frank
>>
>>At 12:03 PM 2/4/02 -0500, David A Dickson wrote:
>> >I have a tabl called 'unit' with a field 'room' of type character
>> >varying(20). I want to change the type to character varying(40).
>> >How do I do this without affecting any data in the table.
>
>Has anyone discovered any workaround to the lack of a full ALTER
>TABLE that preserves the OID for each row? I am finding that for
>insurance I have to assign each table an SERIAL of my own to create
>an autoincremented ID that I can control - because using OID as a key
>requires me to update the key throughout the database if I have to
>drop the table.
>
>Elaine Lindelef