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From: aoki@cs.berkeley.edu (Paul M. Aoki)
To: Robert.Patrick@cs.cmu.edu
Cc: postgres@postgres.Berkeley.EDU
Subject: Re: bytea data types 
Reply-To: aoki@cs.berkeley.edu (Paul M. Aoki)
In-reply-to: Your message of Tue, 16 Aug 1994 20:19:56 -0400 (EDT) 
	     <wiIJSg_00hMdAid31E@cs.cmu.edu> 
Date: Fri, 19 Aug 94 12:47:07 -0700
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Robert.Patrick@cs.cmu.edu writes:
> Postgres has a built-in byte array type (bytea).  My question is how do
> I use this type?  For example, let's say I have a small GIF file (or any
> other binary data) that I want to store as a byte array.
> create images (id =int4, contents=bytea)
> append images (id=1234, contents=?????????)
> What I really want to know is:
> 1.) What goes where the "??????????" are?

in general, if you want to know exactly what the syntax for a type
is, look in src/utils/adt (in this case, varlena.c).  the syntax
for bytea appears to be the same as for strings (characters for
printables, \xxx for non-printables).  i think i would use large
objects instead.

> 2.) If this can be done, is the big-endian, little-endian problem
>           handled by Postgres or do I have to do it myself? 

postgres does (almost) no byteswapping anywhere, including the 
network connections.
--
  Paul M. Aoki          |  University of California at Berkeley
  aoki@CS.Berkeley.EDU  |  Dept. of EECS, Computer Science Division (#1776) 
                        |  Berkeley, CA 94720-1776

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