Greg Stark <gsstark(at)mit(dot)edu> writes:
> The elephant in the room is if the binary encoded form is smaller then
> it occupies less ram and disk bandwidth to copy it around.
It seems equally likely that a binary-encoded form could be larger
than the text form (that's often true for our other datatypes).
Again, this is an argument that would require experimental evidence
to back it up.
regards, tom lane