• format x'aaaaaaa'

  • in PostgreSQL: BIT literal, defines a bit string and allows any number of hexadecimal digits (i.e. the smallest value is 4 bits).
  • in CockroachDB: BYTES literal, defines a byte string and only allows pairs of hexadecimal digits.

• format b'aaaaaaa'

  • in PostgreSQL: BIT literal, defines a bit string and allows any number of binary digits (i.e. the smallest value is 1 bit).
  • in CockroachDB: BYTES literal, defines a byte string using escapes.

In PostgreSQL, byte array literals use a different syntax, either:

• e'ab\nc'::BYTEA (escaped string, the same is achieved currently with b'...' in crdb)
• '\xAAAA'::BYTEA (i.e. string starting with \x; the same is achieved currently with x'...' in crdb)

@nvanbenschoten @bdarnell what do you think? We need to support the BIT type properly ultimately. I am tempted to set up a plan to deprecate the current literal format in 2.1 so that it becomes available for BIT in 2.2. Thoughts?

Jira issue: CRDB-5687

Epic CRDB-60814