Matthias Apitz wrote: > I wanted to look into a column of type varchar converting the content > with ::bytea to a hex string, but this fails when the column contains a > backslash: Yes, casting from text to bytea cannot be used for that. The convert_to() function must be used instead. From the doc at https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/functions-binarystring.html convert_to ( string text, dest_encoding name ) → bytea Converts a text string (in the database encoding) to a binary string encoded in encoding dest_encoding (see Section 24.3.4 for available conversions). convert_to('some_text', 'UTF8') → \x736f6d655f74657874 Best regards, -- Daniel Vérité PostgreSQL-powered mailer: https://www.manitou-mail.org Twitter: @DanielVerite