Re: psql \l error

> This is evidently happening because psql's initial inquiry about the
> database encoding fails.
>
> Seems like it might be a good idea if the non-MULTIBYTE stub versions of
> pg_encoding_to_char() and friends were to return default values (eg,
> "SQL_ASCII") instead of erroring out. A MULTIBYTE version of psql
> really ought to be able to work with a non-MULTIBYTE server.
>
> > postgres=# \l
> > ERROR: No such function 'pg_encoding_to_char' with the
> > specified attributes
>
> Hmm. This is happening because 7.0 psql tries to display the encoding
> of each database if psql was compiled with MULTIBYTE.
>
> Here you are evidently talking to a pre-7.0 server (both because
> a 7.0 server should have that function, even if the function
> refuses to work ;-)) and because a 7.0 server does not spell the
> 'No such function' error message quite that way.
>
> This one is a little nastier. The only solution I could see that would
> guarantee backwards compatibility is for psql not to try to display the
> database encoding; that doesn't seem like a win. I think there are
> some other small incompatibilities between 7.0 psql and pre-7.0 servers
> anyway, so eliminating this one by dumbing down \l is probably not
> the way to proceed.
>
> So, I'd suggest fixing the first issue (so that 7.0 MULTIBYTE psql works
> with non-MULTIBYTE 7.0 server) but not trying to do anything about
> MULTIBYTE psql with a pre-7.0 server. Comments?

Sounds reasonable. I will fix the former but will leave the later as
it is.
--
Tatsuo Ishii