Newbie question about blobs and bytea

Hi all,

    I have read the stuff on blobs and bytea columns many time in the
past few years , but just do not get it.  I have short files, stored on
the operating system as - say - pdf files.  Can I store the content of
one of these files in a bytea column?  If I do, how do I store and
retrieve the file for display on the screen?  If I do this in a bytea
column do I need to escape anything?


Thanks,

Mary Anderson