storing binary data

Reply-To: sender

Hi. I was surprised to discover today that postgres's
character types don't support zero bytes. That is,
Postgres isn't 8-bit clean. Why is that?

More to the point, I need to store about 1k bytes per row
of varying-length 8-bit binary data. I have a few options:

+ BLOBs. PostgreSQL BLOBs make me nervous. I worry about
the BLOB not being deleted when the corresponding row in
the table is deleted. The documentation is vague.

+ What I really need is a binary *short* object type.
I have heard rumors of a legendary "bytea" type that might
help me, but it doesn't appear to be documented anywhere,
so I hesitate to use it.

+ I can base64-encode the data and store it in a "text"
field. But postgres is a great big data-storage system;
surely it can store binary data without resorting to
this kind of hack.

What should I do? Please help. Thanks!

--
Jason Orendorff

P.S. I would love to help improve PostgreSQL's documentation.
Whom should I contact?