Thread: problem with escaping "

Hello,
I've created a new type in C, with the following structure:

typedef struct movie_property {
   int4 length;
   int4 id;
   char name[31];
   char value[256];
} movie_property;

I did the functions for the input, parsing and output, but one problem
apears.
If I try to insert some text with " inside, I try to escape it with a \
(in fact, I'm doing this from php, with its function "addslashes")

INSERT INTO pp VALUES ('(1, "aa \" bb", "fghij")')

But I get an error:
Bad movie_property external representation '(1, "aa " bb", "fghij")'

which means that my movie_property_in function receives the string
'(1, "aa " bb", "fghij")', without the \ in it.

The same exact thing works for varchar or text fields.
What can I do ?

Andrei Ivanov <andrei.ivanov@ines.ro> writes:
> If I try to insert some text with " inside, I try to escape it with a \
> INSERT INTO pp VALUES ('(1, "aa \" bb", "fghij")')
> But I get an error:
> Bad movie_property external representation '(1, "aa " bb", "fghij")'
> which means that my movie_property_in function receives the string
> '(1, "aa " bb", "fghij")', without the \ in it.

Yup.  The backslash will be eaten by the string-literal parser.

> The same exact thing works for varchar or text fields.

No it doesn't.  Observe:

regression=# select  ('(1, "aa \" bb", "fghij")')::text;
          text
-------------------------
 (1, "aa " bb", "fghij")
(1 row)

You'll need to double the backslash if you want the type's I/O function
to see it.  Compare for example the discussion of array quoting at the
bottom of this page:
http://www.ca.postgresql.org/users-lounge/docs/7.2/postgres/arrays.html

            regards, tom lane