Re: [HACKERS] Implications of multi-byte support in a distribution

> > Each encoding/character set can behave however you want. You can reuse
> > collation and sorting code from another character set, or define a
> > unique one.
> Is it really inside one postmaster instance ?
> If so, then is the character encoding defined at the create table /
> create index process (maybe even separately for each field ?) or can I
> specify it when sort'ing ?

Yes, yes, and yes ;)

I would propose that we implement the explicit collation features of
SQL92 using implicit type conversion. So if you want to use a
different sorting order on a *compatible* character set, then (looking
up in Date and Darwen for the syntax...):

'test string' COLLATE CASE_INSENSITIVITY

becomes internally

case_insensitivity('test string'::text)

and

c1 < c2 COLLATE CASE_INSENSITIVITY

becomes

case_insensitivity(c1) < case_insensitivity(c2)

- Thomas

--
Thomas Lockhart lockhart(at)alumni(dot)caltech(dot)edu
South Pasadena, California