Re: Unicode UTF-8 table formatting for psql text output

On Tue, Sep 29, 2009 at 12:01:30PM -0400, Tom Lane wrote:
> Peter Eisentraut <peter_e(at)gmx(dot)net> writes:
> > On Mon, 2009-09-28 at 20:49 -0700, Brad T. Sliger wrote:
> >> pg_regress clears LC_ALL by default, but does not clear LANG
> >> by default. Please find attached a patch that
> >> causes pg_regress to also clear LANG by default.
>
> > It probably doesn't matter much, but I think the proper fix would be to
> > unset LC_CTYPE.
>
> Wouldn't we have to clear *all* of these variables to be sure?
>
> The bigger question is exactly how we expect this stuff to interact with
> pg_regress' --no-locale switch. We already do clear all these variables
> when --no-locale is specified. I am wondering just what --locale is
> supposed to do, and whether selectively lobotomizing the LC stuff has
> any real use at all.

While this is currently just hypothetical, the code is also making the
assumption that the C locale is ASCII. However, there is no guarantee
that this is the case. ASCII is the minimal requirement, and UTF-8 is
a superset (according to SUS/POSIX).

In Debian, we do have plans to introduce a C.UTF-8 locale, and perhaps
eventually move the C locale to using UTF-8 by default, at which point
the tests would again fail because you would still get the UTF-8
formatting despite all of the LC_ etc. munging. (At that point, we
would have a C.ASCII for compatibility.)

Regards,
Roger

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