Between google searches and my own experiments, I can't find any way to actually make this work. I have a TEXT[] column, and one of the values I want to insert is 'text "for" you'. Is there no way to do this using the {} syntax? Chronicled below are several of my attempts (various noise has been snipped): bill=# create table testarray (a TEXT[], id BIGSERIAL PRIMARY KEY); bill=# insert into testarray (a) values (E'{"text \"for you\"","moretext"}'); ERROR: malformed array literal: "{"text "for you"","moretext"}" bill=# insert into testarray (a) values (E'{"text \\"for you\\"","moretext"}'); INSERT 0 1 bill=# select * from testarray; a | id -------------------------------+---- {"text \"for you\"",moretext} | 3 bill=# insert into testarray (a) values (E'{"text \"for you\"","moretext"}'); ERROR: malformed array literal: "{"text "for you"","moretext"}" bill=# insert into testarray (a) values (E'{"text ""for you","moretext"}'); ERROR: malformed array literal: "{"text ""for you","moretext"}" bill=# insert into testarray (a) values (E'{"text "for" you","moretext"}'); ERROR: malformed array literal: "{"text "for" you","moretext"}" bill=# insert into testarray (a) values (E'{"text \"for\" you","moretext"}'); ERROR: malformed array literal: "{"text "for" you","moretext"}" bill=# insert into testarray (a) values (E'{"text \042for\042 you","moretext"}'); ERROR: malformed array literal: "{"text "for" you","moretext"}" bill=# insert into testarray (a) values (E'{"text \\042for\\042 you","moretext"}'); INSERT 0 1 bill=# select * from testarray; a | id ---------------------------------+---- {"text 042for042 you",moretext} | 4 -- Bill Moran http://www.potentialtech.com http://people.collaborativefusion.com/~wmoran/ -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general