It turns out I didn't have to modify your existing parse function at all - all I had to do was register the above datatypes =)

I haven't added any tests yet but I was thinking of doing the following for a test:

setup:

1. create a database
2. create a table with columns (text[], varchar[], char[])

test:

1. insert data into above table
2. select data from above table and see if it matches expectations

teardown:

1. remove table
2. remove databse

Considering the above is at least 100 lines of code I want to make sure that there wasn't an easier way of testing the above.