String literals and escape characters in postgresql

Cool.

I also found the documentation regarding the E:

http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.3/interactive/sql-syntax-lexical.html#SQL-SYNTAX-STRINGS

PostgreSQL also accepts "escape" string constants, which are an extension to the SQL standard. An escape string constant is specified by writing the letter E (upper or lower case) just before the opening single quote, e.g. E'foo'. (When continuing an escape string constant across lines, write E only before the first opening quote.) Within an escape string, a backslash character (\) begins a C-like backslash escape sequence, in which the combination of backslash and following character(s) represents a special byte value. \b is a backspace, \f is a form feed, \n is a newline, \r is a carriage return, \t is a tab. Also supported are \digits, where digits represents an octal byte value, and \xhexdigits, where hexdigits represents a hexadecimal byte value. (It is your responsibility that the byte sequences you create are valid characters in the server character set encoding.) Any other character following a backslash is taken literally. Thus, to include a backslash character, write two backslashes (\\). Also, a single quote can be included in an escape string by writing \', in addition to the normal way of ''.


Partially. The text is inserted, but the warning is still generated.

I found a discussion that indicated the text needed to be preceded with 'E', as such:

insert into EscapeTest (text) values (E'This is the first part \n And this is the second');

This suppressed the warning, but the text was still not being returned correctly. When I added the additional slash as Michael suggested, it worked.

As such:

insert into EscapeTest (text) values (E'This is the first part \\n And this is the second');

The warning is issued since you are using backslashes in your strings. If you want to avoid the message, type this command "set standard_conforming_strings=on;". Then use "E" before your string including backslashes that you want postgresql to intrepret.