Message-ID: <3BFBDEA9.3070703@home.com>
Date: Wed, 21 Nov 2001 09:04:41 -0800
From: Joe Conway <joseph.conway@home.com>
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To: Patrick Welche <prlw1@newn.cam.ac.uk>
CC: pgsql-interfaces@postgresql.org
Subject: Re: [PATCHES] PQescapeBytea documentation patch
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Patrick Welche wrote:

> This makes me wonder: should libpq contain a function to do the opposite
> too? eg.
> 
> string=GetValue(from a bytea type column)
> PQunescapeBytea(string, some buffer, buffer's size)
> 
> - or is there already another way of doing it?
> 
> It seems to me that anyone using bytea with libpq will end up having
> to reinvent this wheel. (Something worthy of being knocked up in my
> Copious Free Time (tm))

I thought about that, but did not write it for a couple of reasons:

First, there wasn't a strong consensus that this type of function 
belonged as part of libpq in the first place, so I didn't want to push 
my luck ;-)

Second, at least in my current work, I'm using binary cursors, in which 
case no unescaping is necessary.

I do agree that a standard bytea unescape function should be available 
in the client library somewhere. Maybe for 7.3 . . .

Joe