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-owner@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:pgsql-general-owner@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of John R Pierce Sent: Friday, October 18, 2013 5:12 PM To: pgsql-general@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: Re: [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 -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general
