text type

text data expresses a Unicode string. This is equivalent to string or varchar in other RDBMSes.

Syntax

Standard

To escape a single quote character (') in a standard string literal, write two adjacent single quotes:

SELECT 'single''quote' AS output

   output
------------
single'quote

All other characters are taken literally.

Escape

A string literal that is preceded by an e or E is an “escape” string literal:

Escape string literals follow the same rules as standard string literals, except that backslash character (\) starts an escape sequence. The following escape sequences are recognized:

Any other character following a backslash is taken literally, so \\ specifies a literal backslash, and \' is an alternate means of escaping the single quote character.

Unlike in PostgreSQL, there are no escapes that produce arbitrary byte values, in order to ensure that escape string literals are always valid UTF-8.

Details

Valid casts

From text

You can cast text to all types except record. All casts are explicit. Casts from text will error if the string is not valid input for the destination type.

To text

You can cast all types to text. All casts are by assignment.

Examples

SELECT 'hello' AS text_val;

 text_val
---------
 hello

SELECT E'behold\nescape strings\U0001F632' AS escape_val;

   escape_val
-----------------
 behold         +
 escape strings😲