title: Converting bytea back to varchar
body: <p>In Postgres when I want to save a varchar to a bytea column, this is made easy by an implicit conversion. So I can simply execute</p>
  <pre><code>UPDATE my_table SET my_bytea_col = 'This varchar will be converted' WHERE id = 1;
  </code></pre>
  <p>I use this all the time. However, I would like to occasionally see the contents of this column as a varchar. IDEs will handle this for you, but I would prefer in my use case to return the results with the bytea converted back to a varchar.</p>
  <p>Of course I've tried something like this, among more complex options:</p>
  <pre><code>select my_bytea_col::VARCHAR from my_table WHERE id = 1
  </code></pre>
  <p>This, however, doesn't return my original readable text. How else can I convert my bytea back to the original varchar after postgres's implicit conversion in updates and inserts like the one above?</p>