BUG #8880: no indication of value when exceeded maximum length

The following bug has been logged on the website:

Bug reference: 8880
Logged by: Maor Lipchuk
Email address: mlipchuk(at)redhat(dot)com
PostgreSQL version: 9.2.3
Operating system: Fedora 18
Description:

When trying to insert a varchar value in a limited column which exceed the
column limitation, we get an error of "value too long for type
character(%d)).
e.g varchar(5) --> value of 6 character "123456"

There is no indication which value exceeded the limitation and for big
tables it is almost impossible to indicate the specific exceeded value.

On Sun, Jan 19, 2014 at 04:11:39PM +0000, mlipchuk(at)redhat(dot)com wrote:
> The following bug has been logged on the website:
>
> Bug reference: 8880
> Logged by: Maor Lipchuk
> Email address: mlipchuk(at)redhat(dot)com
> PostgreSQL version: 9.2.3
> Operating system: Fedora 18
> Description:
>
> When trying to insert a varchar value in a limited column which exceed the
> column limitation, we get an error of "value too long for type
> character(%d)).
> e.g varchar(5) --> value of 6 character "123456"
>
> There is no indication which value exceeded the limitation and for big
> tables it is almost impossible to indicate the specific exceeded value.

Yes, that is odd. If it was a constraint we would have printed out the
name of the constraint being violated, but type checking doesn't have
names and doesn't report which field is a problem. I am not sure what
to recommend here. I tried psql's \set VERBOSITY verbose, but that
didn't help:

test=> \set VERBOSITY verbose
test=> INSERT INTO test VALUES ('123456', '123456');
ERROR: 22001: value too long for type character varying(5)
LOCATION: varchar, varchar.c:623

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Bruce Momjian <bruce(at)momjian(dot)us> http://momjian.us
EnterpriseDB http://enterprisedb.com

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