How to change column datatype from character to numeric in PostgreSQL 8.4

Question

You can try using USING:

The optional USING clause specifies how to compute the new column value from the old; if omitted, the default conversion is the same as an assignment cast from old data type to new. A USING clause must be provided if there is no implicit or assignment cast from old to new type.

So this might work (depending on your data):

alter table presales alter column code type numeric(10,0) using code::numeric;
-- Or if you prefer standard casting...
alter table presales alter column code type numeric(10,0) using cast(code as numeric);

This will fail if you have anything in code that cannot be cast to numeric; if the USING fails, you'll have to clean up the non-numeric data by hand before changing the column type.

If your VARCHAR column contains empty strings (which are not the same as NULL for PostgreSQL as you might recall) you will have to use something in the line of the following to set a default:

ALTER TABLE presales ALTER COLUMN code TYPE NUMERIC(10,0)
            USING COALESCE(NULLIF(code, '')::NUMERIC, 0);

(found with the help of this answer)