Better performance no-throw conversion?

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.