not just the back slashes cos as i believ all the numbers after them mean something too. I may have to completely re think this!!!

i only saw part of the output, what format is this output in?

this is a small segment form the begginning

\\377\\330\\377\\340\\000\\020JFIF\\000\\001\\002\\001\\001,\\001,\\000\\000\\377\\342\\034mICC_PROFILE\\000\\001\\001\\000\\000\\034]Lino\\002\\020\\000\\000mntrRGB XYZ \\007\\316\\000\\002\\000\\011\\000\\006\\0001\\000\\000acspMSFT\\000\\000\\000\\000IEC sRGB\\000\\000\\000\\000\\000\\000\\000\\000\\000\\000\\000\\000\\000\\000\\366\\326\\000\\001\\000\\000\\000\\000\\323-HP \\000\\000\\000\\000\\000\\000\\000\\000\\000\\000\\000\\000\\000\\000\\000\\000\\000\\000\\000\\000\\000\\000\\000\\000\\000\\000\\000\\000\\000\\000\\000\\000\\000\\000\\000\\000\\000\\000\\000\\000\\000\\000\\000\\000\\000\\000\\000\\021cprt\\000\\000\\001P\\000\\000\\0003desc\\000\\000\\001\\203\\000\\000\\000lwtpt\\000\\000\\001\\357\\000\\000\\000\\024bkpt\\000\\000\\002\\003\\000\\000\\000\\024rXYZ\\000\\000\\002\\027\\000\\000\\000\\024gXYZ\\000\\000\\002+\\000\\000\\000\\024bXYZ\\000\\000\\002?\\000\\000\\000\\024dmnd\\000\\000\\002S\\000\\000\\000pdmdd\\000\\000\\002\\303\\000\\000\\000\\210vued\\000\\000\\003K\\000\\000\\000\\206view\\000\\000\\003\\321\\000\\000\\000$lumi\\000\\000\\003\\365\\000\\

the image field is made up of this - this is what is called a standard escape sequence as si believe and there are apparantley ways to get it converted back to its original binary form!

think this is what postgre calls bytea

check out this
http://docs.huihoo.com/enterprisedb/...singbytea.html

25.15.1. Retrieving the BYTEA Column Using .NET Code

hopefully that can be a good start

this gave me a glimmer of hope but it still boils down do the data is not even in bytea form. maybe it was when strored in the db but when exported from the db to the psv file it converst it to standard escape sequence. Not sure if there is anything i can do - will have to go back to them and see what we can sort out

many thanks for your all time and effort spent on this it is very much appreciated!

here's another tidbit i found

http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.3/i...pe-binary.html

very interesting - it looks like the postgreSQL server parses it and converts it back to its bytea - its that process that removes all the backslashes and converts all the digits back to their octet value, or so i understand! this may be a bit difficult to do it without postgresql!!!

thanks for this

could be done without it, i think you would have to parse and eliminate the extra escape characters then convert it to a byte array using encoding getbytes

i might be wrong, but just a shot

yes but its knowing which are the escape characters and what the octet conversion for numbers 0 through 255 are!