Postgres and gzcompress

Hi, I would like to store a compressed string (XML) in my PostgreSQL table. So far, I have been unsuccessful in uncompressing the data that I insert. For example: echo gzuncompress(gzcompress('this is a test')); works fine. But when i store the gzcompressed data in the table, the data that is returned from a SELECT call does not match and the call to gzuncompress throws a "data error" warning. I have tried storing in both text and bytea column types. The problem appears to be in the escaping. For example, with bytea: $data = gzcompress('this is a test'); echo $data; $data2 = pg_unescape_bytea(pg_escape_bytea($data)); echo $data2; $data does not equal $data2. And with a 'text' column type, i use pg_escape_string() and the returned column value does not match. Am i doing something wrong? Is there an easier way? Thanks, Nate