"Michael Artz" <mlartz@gmail.com> writes:
> What ig going on behind the scenes? Does it first get converted to text and
> then on to bytea?
No, the \nnn escape is built into the lexer's syntax for a string
literal (see backend/parser/scan.l), and only after that does the string
get fed to bytea's input routine (or any other datatype's either).
In hindsight this was a horribly bad idea that we'll be paying through
the nose for, for some time to come :-(. But we're stuck with it for
the moment.
regards, tom lane