8.6. Boolean Type

PostgreSQL provides the standard SQL type boolean; see Table 8.19. The boolean type can have several states: “true”, “false”, and a third state, “unknown”, which is represented by the SQL null value.

Table 8.19. Boolean Data Type

Name	Storage Size	Description
boolean	1 byte	state of true or false

Boolean constants can be represented in SQL queries by the SQL key words TRUE, FALSE, and NULL.

The datatype input function for type boolean accepts these string representations for the “true” state:

true
yes
on
1

and these representations for the “false” state:

false
no
off
0

Unique prefixes of these strings are also accepted, for example t or n. Leading or trailing whitespace is ignored, and case does not matter.

The datatype output function for type boolean always emits either t or f, as shown in Example 8.2.

Example 8.2. Using the boolean Type

CREATE TABLE test1 (a boolean, b text);
INSERT INTO test1 VALUES (TRUE, 'sic est');
INSERT INTO test1 VALUES (FALSE, 'non est');
SELECT * FROM test1;
 a |    b