BUG #5092: to_ascii(); ascii() don't work with bytea

The following bug has been logged online:

Bug reference: 5092
Logged by: Dan French
Email address: Bomarc_com(at)yahoo(dot)com
PostgreSQL version: 8.4
Operating system: Windows 2003
Description: to_ascii(); ascii() don't work with bytea
Details:

Version 8.4
#1: bytea_string = '"0"' (table; bytea)
Function:
trim('"' both from bytea_string)
fails and returns: '"0'

#2: Come on folks: Bytea is a series of bytes. Conversion to ASCII is not
this difficult; and should (does) not require explicit type casts (esp since
they are already in ASCII)

SELECT ID, details_map,
--date_part('hour', interval
-- cast (
trim(both '"' from
to_ascii (
encode(convert_to(
{bytea starts here}
substring(...))...

Result (variations) include:
ERROR: function ascii(bytea) does not exist
ERROR: function convert_to(bytea) does not exist