Hi John,

We stored ISO-8859-1, do we still need to use iconv to convert the file?

Thanks,
Suya

-----Original Message-----
From: pgsql-general-ow...@postgresql.org 
[mailto:pgsql-general-ow...@postgresql.org] On Behalf Of John R Pierce
Sent: Friday, October 18, 2013 5:12 PM
To: pgsql-general@postgresql.org
Subject: Re: [GENERAL] [ADMIN] what's the efficient/safest way to convert 
database character set ?

On 10/17/2013 10:51 PM, Huang, Suya wrote:
> Question: How can I pull out the real character set information from the 
> database? does it rely on the understanding of business knowledge?


what did you store in it?   because its declared SQL_ASCII, postgres 
doesn't know, its all just bytes.   you could have stored standard 7 bit 
USASCII, or you could have stored ISO-8859-1 (-2, -3,...), or you could have 
stored one of the myriad non-UTF Asian multibyte character 
codes.    postgres doesn't know or care what you put in there, and it 
doesn't check to ensure its valid.

IF all your data is in a consistent encoding, and you specify that encoding on 
the pg_dump command, then the psql command should be able to restore it as-is 
to the new UTF8 database via the magic of 
client_encoding.    if the data is not consistent, you'll have a much 
harder time.





-- 
john r pierce                                      37N 122W
somewhere on the middle of the left coast



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