Bug #34564 CAST does not accept varchar type

Description:
Cast should accept varchar ar the target type:

SELECT CAST(123 AS varchar) -> "...syntax to use near 'varchar)'"
SELECT CAST(CURRENT_TIMESTAMP() AS varchar) -> "...syntax to use near 'varchar)'"
SELECT CAST(123 AS char) -> OK

How to repeat:
> SELECT CAST(123 AS varchar);

Thank you for a problem report. As current implementation is documented at http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/cast-functions.html#function_cast, I'd say this is just a reasonable and high priority feature request.

I must plea for changing this back to a bug. This is a sql non-conformace issue, and there is no portable and spec-compliant way to return an numeric type as varchar in Mysql right now. "CAST(n AS char)" works in Mysql but is technically not correct, and not consistent with other databases. Other DBs also do not support autocast (spec does not require it), so TRIM() etc are not portable.

OK. But in any case, please, do not expect any changes in CAST soon.

yep, there has being no change so far.