Stefan Froehlich <postgresql@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes: > ... Casting the result does not work either: > # select encode(encode(column, 'escape')::bytea, 'escape') > because the cast reverts the effect of the first encode(), so the result > does not change. Since there's no explicitly defined cast from text to bytea according to pg_cast, what happens when you do this is that the textual result of the inner encode() is fed to bytea's input function, which of course is supposed to decode escaped data. > If I take the result of the first encode() with copy/paste and put > it through another encode() statement, everything is fine - but I > have not found out a way how to automate this. I'm a bit confused by this statement, because it sounds like what you did manually is precisely to feed the text string to bytea's input function. So I don't see quite what the difference is. It's possible that what you are looking for is a binary-equivalent cast from text to bytea, which you could create like this: # create cast (text as bytea) without function; However when I experiment with # select encode(encode(column, 'escape')::bytea, 'escape') after doing that, it doesn't seem like the results are very useful, so I think I'm misunderstanding. regards, tom lane
