Re: length() return wrong result

Cédric Villemain wrote:
> - From the documentation, length(string) is 'Number of characters in string'
>
> But it didn't :
>
> 1/ in a LATIN9 database:
>
> postgres=# show server_encoding;
> server_encoding
> - -----------------
> LATIN9
>
> postgres=# set client_encoding = utf8;
> SET
> postgres=# select length('é');
> length
> - --------
> 1
>
> postgres=# set client_encoding = latin9;
> SET
> postgres=# select length('é');
> length
> - --------
> 2

I bet your console works in UTF-8, so setting client_encoding=latin9 is
not the right thing to do. If you replace "select length('é')" with
"INSERT INTO foo VALUES ('é')", and check the contents of the table with
SELECT * FROM foo afterwards, you'll see that the string is garbled in
the latter case, and indeed consists of two characters.

As you noticed, server_encoding makes no difference here.

--
Heikki Linnakangas
EnterpriseDB http://www.enterprisedb.com