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

On Tue, 31 Aug 1999, Tatsuo Ishii wrote:

> Date: Tue, 31 Aug 1999 18:29:21 +0900
> From: Tatsuo Ishii <t-ishii(at)sra(dot)co(dot)jp>
> To: Thomas Lockhart <lockhart(at)alumni(dot)caltech(dot)edu>
> Cc: Oliver Elphick <olly(at)lfix(dot)co(dot)uk>, hackers(at)postgresql(dot)org,
> 43702(at)bugs(dot)debian(dot)org
> Subject: Re: [HACKERS] Implications of multi-byte support in a distribution
>
> >> I have had a request to add multi-byte support to the Debian binary
> >> packages of PostgreSQL.
> >> Since I live in England, I have personally no need of this and therefore
> >> have little understanding of the implications.
> >> If I change the packages to use multi-byte support, (UNICODE (UTF-8) is
> >> suggested as the default), will there be any detrimental effects on the
> >> fairly large parts of the world that don't need it? Should I try to
> >> provide two different packages, one with and one without MB support?
> >
> >Probably. The downside to having MB support is reduced performance and
> >perhaps functionality. If you don't need it, don't build it...
>
> Not really. I did the regression test with/without multi-byte enabled.
>
> with MB: 2:53:92 elapsed
> w/o MB: 2:52.92 elapsed
>
> Perhaps the worst case for MB would be regex ops. If you do a lot of
> regex queries, performance degration might not be neglectable.

It should be. What would be nice is to have a column-specific
MB support. But I doubt if it's possible.

>
> Load module size:
>
> with MB: 1208542
> w/o MB: 1190925
>
> (difference is 17KB)
>
> Talking about the functionality, I don't see any missing feature with
> MB comparing w/o MB. (there are some features only MB has. for
> example, SET NAMES).
> --
> Tatsuo Ishii
>
> ************
>

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