For sure, I’m thinking of it that way. Thanks for confirming.
What I don’t understand is that if I respond to psql with the RowDescription indicating the format code is 1 for binary (and encode it that way, with 4 bytes, in the DataRow) it doesn’t render the number in the results.
Please don't top-post.
psql is a command line program, the server is PostgreSQL or postgres.
I'm not familiar with interacting with the server in C or at the protocol level; I have no idea what that sentence is supposed to mean. But RowDescription seems to be strictly informative so how would you "respond to psql with [it]"?