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Thread: Bytea question with \208

Bytea question with \208

From
"Woody Woodring"
Date:
Could someone explain why \208 is not a valid syntax for bytea?

I am getting the following:

test=> select E'\\207'::bytea;
 bytea
-------
 \207
(1 row)

test=> select E'\\208'::bytea;
ERROR:  invalid input syntax for type bytea
test=> select E'\\209'::bytea;
ERROR:  invalid input syntax for type bytea
test=> select E'\\210'::bytea;
 bytea
-------
 \210
(1 row)

This all started when our version(older) of bugzilla trying to open a new
bug with a word attachment via email:

Aug  9 11:43:15 brain01 postgres[8631]: [5-1] ERROR:  invalid byte sequence
for encoding "UTF8": 0xd0cf

The first two bytes of the word document are 0xd0 0xcf and I am assuming
they are putting the two together since 0xd0 is invalid

0xd0 == \208

Thanks,
Woody

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iGLASS Networks
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www.iglass.net

Re: Bytea question with \208

From
Tom Lane
Date:
"Woody Woodring" <george.woodring@iglass.net> writes:
> Could someone explain why \208 is not a valid syntax for bytea?

Aren't those escapes octal?

            regards, tom lane

Re: Bytea question with \208

From
"Woody Woodring"
Date:
Thanks,

My bad,  the table I was looking (8.7) at had the first column as the
decimal representation and I did notice that the numbers changed as they
moved right.

Is there a way for bytea to take a hex number, or do I need to convert the
bit stream to octal numbers?

Thanks again,
Woody

-----Original Message-----
From: pgsql-general-owner@postgresql.org
[mailto:pgsql-general-owner@postgresql.org] On Behalf Of Tom Lane
Sent: Thursday, August 09, 2007 2:14 PM
To: Woody Woodring
Cc: pgsql-general@postgresql.org
Subject: Re: [GENERAL] Bytea question with \208

"Woody Woodring" <george.woodring@iglass.net> writes:
> Could someone explain why \208 is not a valid syntax for bytea?

Aren't those escapes octal?

            regards, tom lane

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Re: Bytea question with \208

From
Decibel!
Date:
On Thu, Aug 09, 2007 at 04:16:15PM -0400, Woody Woodring wrote:
> My bad,  the table I was looking (8.7) at had the first column as the
> decimal representation and I did notice that the numbers changed as they
> moved right.
>
> Is there a way for bytea to take a hex number, or do I need to convert the
> bit stream to octal numbers?

to_hex()?

> -----Original Message-----
> From: pgsql-general-owner@postgresql.org
> [mailto:pgsql-general-owner@postgresql.org] On Behalf Of Tom Lane
> Sent: Thursday, August 09, 2007 2:14 PM
> To: Woody Woodring
> Cc: pgsql-general@postgresql.org
> Subject: Re: [GENERAL] Bytea question with \208
>
> "Woody Woodring" <george.woodring@iglass.net> writes:
> > Could someone explain why \208 is not a valid syntax for bytea?
>
> Aren't those escapes octal?
>
>             regards, tom lane
>
> ---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
> TIP 5: don't forget to increase your free space map settings
>
>
> ---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
> TIP 3: Have you checked our extensive FAQ?
>
>                http://www.postgresql.org/docs/faq
>

--
Decibel!, aka Jim Nasby                        decibel@decibel.org
EnterpriseDB      http://enterprisedb.com      512.569.9461 (cell)
Attachment

Re: Bytea question with \208

From
Lew
Date:
Decibel! wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 09, 2007 at 04:16:15PM -0400, Woody Woodring wrote:
>> My bad,  the table I was looking (8.7) at had the first column as the
>> decimal representation and I did notice that the numbers changed as they
>> moved right.
>>
>> Is there a way for bytea to take a hex number, or do I need to convert the
>> bit stream to octal numbers?
>
> to_hex()?

to_hex() produces the text representation of the hex digits, not the actual
bytes with those values.

What the OP wants is to conveniently represent the bytestream to send to the
bytea column.  They're looking for an escape sequence to embed into a text
representation that will map to the exact byte contents to insert, not a text
representation of that representation.

Say,
> Also supported are \digits, where digits represents an octal byte value, and \xhexdigits, where hexdigits represents
ahexadecimal byte value. (It is your responsibility that the byte sequences you create are valid characters in the
servercharacter set encoding.) 
<http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.2/static/sql-syntax-lexical.html#SQL-SYNTAX-STRINGS>

Amazing how useful the docs are.

--
Lew