fatal copy in/out error (6.5.3)

Do this:

testdb=> create table foo (word varchar(30));
CREATE
testdb=> insert into foo values ('\217\210');
INSERT 2337289 1
testdb=> copy "foo" to '/usr/local/pgsql/foo.out';
COPY
testdb=> \q
% od -c foo.out
0000000 217 210 \0 \n
0000004

One run produced:
0000000 217 210 \0 \b \n

In all cases, though, it emits a null. This, of course, causes "copy from" to
fail when it tries to parse a null-containing field in a multi-field record.

As for what the sequence "\217\210" represents, that's not really relevant
(it's not even a valid Chinese character, so far as I can tell). Someone
just entered this into our web interface and broke our database.

-Michael Robinson

P.S. As an aside, if "copy from" recognizes the \xxx octal convention, why
doesn't "copy to" use it to represent everything outside of \040..\176?