Re: Bad character data

I'm using psql through putty (an ssh client). Someone reported using
MindTerm as their ssh client and saw the characters ok...? Weird. But they
are definitely screwed up when viewed through the ultimate client (web
browser).

-----Original Message-----
From: pgsql-admin-owner(at)postgresql(dot)org
[mailto:pgsql-admin-owner(at)postgresql(dot)org] On Behalf Of douglas morrison
Sent: Monday, May 03, 2004 7:11 PM
To: Noah Davis
Cc: pgsql-admin(at)postgresql(dot)org
Subject: Re: [ADMIN] Bad character data

no problem noah,

been there inheriting bad data, suXX0r. wish i could be of more help.
if all else fails look at the translate() function to replace the offending
chars... dunno what i can do, but which type of client are you currently
using?

--
doug

On May 3, 2004, at 4:55 PM, Noah Davis wrote:

> Hi Doug,
>
> Thanks for the response. I do realize it's not the ideal situation,
> but it's the database I inherited, so not much I can do there :) . I
> tried the to_ascii and it doesn't seem to help much. It may be that I
> can try a different client and get more legible characters. Not sure.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: douglas morrison [mailto:luckycat(at)comcast(dot)net]
> Sent: Monday, May 03, 2004 4:38 PM
> To: Noah Davis
> Cc: pgsql-admin(at)postgresql(dot)org
> Subject: Re: [ADMIN] Bad character data
>
> The lack of responses is prolly because this sort of thing is usually
> handled by the client... The client for input should be
> stripping/converting to ASCII/unicode whichever chars are unwanted and
> notifying the user if anything is removed/unusable. The client for
> display should then be able to parse the chars correctly...
>
> You might be able to use your current data if you change your SELECT
> to something like:
>
> SELECT to_ascii(columnName, 'LATIN1') AS convertedColumn
> FROM tableName;
>
>
> hth,
> doug
>
>
>
> On May 3, 2004, at 3:23 PM, Noah Davis wrote:
>
>> I posted this to the pgsql general list, but alas, I did not get any
>> responses. Perhaps someone here could be of assistance?
>>
>> I have a database with some bad characters in it -- some users had
>> entered MS Word smart quotes, em dashes, foreign characters, and they
>> look like gibberish coming out of the database. Most important are
>> the smart quotes I guess.
>>
>> What's the best way to replace these characters? I thought I might be
>> able to run a simple SQL UPDATE command, but some of the gibberish
>> for different characters looks the same (at least from my client it
>> does), and it would clobber them all.
>>
>> I have a feeling there's some sort of ASCII code or unicode solution
>> to this problem, but I could use am little push in the right
>> direction.
>>
>> Thanks.
>>
>> Noah.
>>
>>
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>
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