Re: Binary data in PostgreSQL

Although I am not using it for massive files (small jpegs with people's
mugshots) I have been storing them in a bytea column without problems.

I am using Tcl in AOLserver and it is easy to insert and retrieve the
files. To insert/update, you use hex encoded files, so simply do:
"binary scan $binaryString H* hexdata" to get the hex string and in the
SQL you simply use "decode('$hexdata', 'hex')" as value.

When you retrieve the data, the encoding is a bit, well, weird. (see the
manual) but because it is using backslash escaping of special character
into they ascii values, in Tcl it is dead easy to convert back to binary
data:
set bindata [subst -novariables -nocommands $pgdata].

Hope that helps,
Bas.