Re: 8.3.0, locales, and encodings

Hi Dean,

On Wed, Feb 06, 2008 at 06:29:02PM -0800, Dean Gibson (DB Administrator) wrote:

> 1. The provided /etc/init.d/postgresql file seems to be part of this
> trap. Should it be changed to default the encoding to POSIX?
> 2. I want my installation to have the maximum flexibility. Should I be
> running INITDB w/ "-locale POSIX -E UTF8", or just "-locale POSIX"
> (implying "-E SQL_ASCII")? Or does it make a difference, since I always
> specify the desired database encoding when I "CREATE DATABASE...
> ENCODING '...';"?

AFAIK, it shouldn't make a difference. -E is just the default encoding
for new databases.

> 3. One of my databases is ISO-8859-1, because that's the format of the
> data I get from the US gov't. However, should I instead use the 'UTF8'
> encoding for that database, and then use a client (PSQL) encoding of
> "LATIN1", and let PostgreSQL convert the data? Pros & cons?

I'd store anything UTF8. The performance penalty should be very tiny.

> I presume this ("admin") is the proper PostgreSQL list to post this to.

Yes, it is.

HTH,

Tino.

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