postgresql/doc/src/sgml/charset.sgml

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<!-- doc/src/sgml/charset.sgml -->
<chapter id="charset">
<title>Localization</title>
<para>
This chapter describes the available localization features from the
point of view of the administrator.
<productname>PostgreSQL</productname> supports two localization
facilities:
<itemizedlist>
<listitem>
<para>
Using the locale features of the operating system to provide
locale-specific collation order, number formatting, translated
messages, and other aspects.
This is covered in <xref linkend="locale"/> and
<xref linkend="collation"/>.
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
Providing a number of different character sets to support storing text
in all kinds of languages, and providing character set translation
between client and server.
This is covered in <xref linkend="multibyte"/>.
</para>
</listitem>
</itemizedlist>
</para>
<sect1 id="locale">
<title>Locale Support</title>
<indexterm zone="locale"><primary>locale</primary></indexterm>
<para>
<firstterm>Locale</firstterm> support refers to an application respecting
cultural preferences regarding alphabets, sorting, number
formatting, etc. <productname>PostgreSQL</productname> uses the standard ISO
C and <acronym>POSIX</acronym> locale facilities provided by the server operating
system. For additional information refer to the documentation of your
system.
</para>
<sect2>
<title>Overview</title>
<para>
Locale support is automatically initialized when a database
cluster is created using <command>initdb</command>.
<command>initdb</command> will initialize the database cluster
with the locale setting of its execution environment by default,
so if your system is already set to use the locale that you want
in your database cluster then there is nothing else you need to
do. If you want to use a different locale (or you are not sure
which locale your system is set to), you can instruct
<command>initdb</command> exactly which locale to use by
specifying the <option>--locale</option> option. For example:
<screen>
initdb --locale=sv_SE
</screen>
</para>
<para>
This example for Unix systems sets the locale to Swedish
(<literal>sv</literal>) as spoken
in Sweden (<literal>SE</literal>). Other possibilities might include
<literal>en_US</literal> (U.S. English) and <literal>fr_CA</literal> (French
Canadian). If more than one character set can be used for a
locale then the specifications can take the form
<replaceable>language_territory.codeset</replaceable>. For example,
<literal>fr_BE.UTF-8</literal> represents the French language (fr) as
spoken in Belgium (BE), with a <acronym>UTF-8</acronym> character set
encoding.
</para>
<para>
What locales are available on your
system under what names depends on what was provided by the operating
system vendor and what was installed. On most Unix systems, the command
<literal>locale -a</literal> will provide a list of available locales.
Windows uses more verbose locale names, such as <literal>German_Germany</literal>
or <literal>Swedish_Sweden.1252</literal>, but the principles are the same.
</para>
<para>
Occasionally it is useful to mix rules from several locales, e.g.,
use English collation rules but Spanish messages. To support that, a
set of locale subcategories exist that control only certain
aspects of the localization rules:
<informaltable>
<tgroup cols="2">
<tbody>
<row>
<entry><envar>LC_COLLATE</envar></entry>
<entry>String sort order</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><envar>LC_CTYPE</envar></entry>
<entry>Character classification (What is a letter? Its upper-case equivalent?)</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><envar>LC_MESSAGES</envar></entry>
<entry>Language of messages</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><envar>LC_MONETARY</envar></entry>
<entry>Formatting of currency amounts</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><envar>LC_NUMERIC</envar></entry>
<entry>Formatting of numbers</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><envar>LC_TIME</envar></entry>
<entry>Formatting of dates and times</entry>
</row>
</tbody>
</tgroup>
</informaltable>
The category names translate into names of
<command>initdb</command> options to override the locale choice
for a specific category. For instance, to set the locale to
French Canadian, but use U.S. rules for formatting currency, use
<literal>initdb --locale=fr_CA --lc-monetary=en_US</literal>.
</para>
<para>
If you want the system to behave as if it had no locale support,
use the special locale name <literal>C</literal>, or equivalently
<literal>POSIX</literal>.
</para>
<para>
Some locale categories must have their values
fixed when the database is created. You can use different settings
for different databases, but once a database is created, you cannot
change them for that database anymore. <literal>LC_COLLATE</literal>
and <literal>LC_CTYPE</literal> are these categories. They affect
the sort order of indexes, so they must be kept fixed, or indexes on
text columns would become corrupt.
(But you can alleviate this restriction using collations, as discussed
in <xref linkend="collation"/>.)
The default values for these
categories are determined when <command>initdb</command> is run, and
those values are used when new databases are created, unless
specified otherwise in the <command>CREATE DATABASE</command> command.
</para>
<para>
The other locale categories can be changed whenever desired
by setting the server configuration parameters
that have the same name as the locale categories (see <xref
linkend="runtime-config-client-format"/> for details). The values
that are chosen by <command>initdb</command> are actually only written
into the configuration file <filename>postgresql.conf</filename> to
serve as defaults when the server is started. If you remove these
assignments from <filename>postgresql.conf</filename> then the
server will inherit the settings from its execution environment.
</para>
<para>
Note that the locale behavior of the server is determined by the
environment variables seen by the server, not by the environment
of any client. Therefore, be careful to configure the correct locale settings
before starting the server. A consequence of this is that if
client and server are set up in different locales, messages might
appear in different languages depending on where they originated.
</para>
<note>
<para>
When we speak of inheriting the locale from the execution
environment, this means the following on most operating systems:
For a given locale category, say the collation, the following
environment variables are consulted in this order until one is
found to be set: <envar>LC_ALL</envar>, <envar>LC_COLLATE</envar>
(or the variable corresponding to the respective category),
<envar>LANG</envar>. If none of these environment variables are
set then the locale defaults to <literal>C</literal>.
</para>
<para>
Some message localization libraries also look at the environment
variable <envar>LANGUAGE</envar> which overrides all other locale
settings for the purpose of setting the language of messages. If
in doubt, please refer to the documentation of your operating
system, in particular the documentation about
<application>gettext</application>.
</para>
</note>
<para>
To enable messages to be translated to the user's preferred language,
<acronym>NLS</acronym> must have been selected at build time
(<literal>configure --enable-nls</literal>). All other locale support is
built in automatically.
</para>
</sect2>
<sect2>
<title>Behavior</title>
<para>
The locale settings influence the following SQL features:
<itemizedlist>
<listitem>
<para>
Sort order in queries using <literal>ORDER BY</literal> or the standard
comparison operators on textual data
<indexterm><primary>ORDER BY</primary><secondary>and locales</secondary></indexterm>
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
The <function>upper</function>, <function>lower</function>, and <function>initcap</function>
functions
<indexterm><primary>upper</primary><secondary>and locales</secondary></indexterm>
<indexterm><primary>lower</primary><secondary>and locales</secondary></indexterm>
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
Pattern matching operators (<literal>LIKE</literal>, <literal>SIMILAR TO</literal>,
and POSIX-style regular expressions); locales affect both case
insensitive matching and the classification of characters by
character-class regular expressions
<indexterm><primary>LIKE</primary><secondary>and locales</secondary></indexterm>
<indexterm><primary>regular expressions</primary><secondary>and locales</secondary></indexterm>
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
The <function>to_char</function> family of functions
<indexterm><primary>to_char</primary><secondary>and locales</secondary></indexterm>
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
The ability to use indexes with <literal>LIKE</literal> clauses
</para>
</listitem>
</itemizedlist>
</para>
<para>
The drawback of using locales other than <literal>C</literal> or
<literal>POSIX</literal> in <productname>PostgreSQL</productname> is its performance
impact. It slows character handling and prevents ordinary indexes
from being used by <literal>LIKE</literal>. For this reason use locales
only if you actually need them.
</para>
<para>
As a workaround to allow <productname>PostgreSQL</productname> to use indexes
with <literal>LIKE</literal> clauses under a non-C locale, several custom
operator classes exist. These allow the creation of an index that
performs a strict character-by-character comparison, ignoring
locale comparison rules. Refer to <xref linkend="indexes-opclass"/>
for more information. Another approach is to create indexes using
the <literal>C</literal> collation, as discussed in
<xref linkend="collation"/>.
</para>
</sect2>
<sect2>
<title>Problems</title>
<para>
If locale support doesn't work according to the explanation above,
check that the locale support in your operating system is
correctly configured. To check what locales are installed on your
system, you can use the command <literal>locale -a</literal> if
your operating system provides it.
</para>
<para>
Check that <productname>PostgreSQL</productname> is actually using the locale
that you think it is. The <envar>LC_COLLATE</envar> and <envar>LC_CTYPE</envar>
settings are determined when a database is created, and cannot be
changed except by creating a new database. Other locale
settings including <envar>LC_MESSAGES</envar> and <envar>LC_MONETARY</envar>
are initially determined by the environment the server is started
in, but can be changed on-the-fly. You can check the active locale
settings using the <command>SHOW</command> command.
</para>
<para>
The directory <filename>src/test/locale</filename> in the source
distribution contains a test suite for
<productname>PostgreSQL</productname>'s locale support.
</para>
<para>
Client applications that handle server-side errors by parsing the
text of the error message will obviously have problems when the
server's messages are in a different language. Authors of such
applications are advised to make use of the error code scheme
instead.
</para>
<para>
Maintaining catalogs of message translations requires the on-going
efforts of many volunteers that want to see
<productname>PostgreSQL</productname> speak their preferred language well.
If messages in your language are currently not available or not fully
translated, your assistance would be appreciated. If you want to
help, refer to <xref linkend="nls"/> or write to the developers'
mailing list.
</para>
</sect2>
</sect1>
<sect1 id="collation">
<title>Collation Support</title>
<indexterm zone="collation"><primary>collation</primary></indexterm>
<para>
The collation feature allows specifying the sort order and character
classification behavior of data per-column, or even per-operation.
This alleviates the restriction that the
<symbol>LC_COLLATE</symbol> and <symbol>LC_CTYPE</symbol> settings
of a database cannot be changed after its creation.
</para>
<sect2>
<title>Concepts</title>
<para>
Conceptually, every expression of a collatable data type has a
collation. (The built-in collatable data types are
<type>text</type>, <type>varchar</type>, and <type>char</type>.
User-defined base types can also be marked collatable, and of course
a domain over a collatable data type is collatable.) If the
expression is a column reference, the collation of the expression is the
defined collation of the column. If the expression is a constant, the
collation is the default collation of the data type of the
constant. The collation of a more complex expression is derived
from the collations of its inputs, as described below.
</para>
<para>
The collation of an expression can be the <quote>default</quote>
collation, which means the locale settings defined for the
database. It is also possible for an expression's collation to be
indeterminate. In such cases, ordering operations and other
operations that need to know the collation will fail.
</para>
<para>
When the database system has to perform an ordering or a character
classification, it uses the collation of the input expression. This
happens, for example, with <literal>ORDER BY</literal> clauses
and function or operator calls such as <literal>&lt;</literal>.
The collation to apply for an <literal>ORDER BY</literal> clause
is simply the collation of the sort key. The collation to apply for a
function or operator call is derived from the arguments, as described
below. In addition to comparison operators, collations are taken into
account by functions that convert between lower and upper case
letters, such as <function>lower</function>, <function>upper</function>, and
<function>initcap</function>; by pattern matching operators; and by
<function>to_char</function> and related functions.
</para>
<para>
For a function or operator call, the collation that is derived by
examining the argument collations is used at run time for performing
the specified operation. If the result of the function or operator
call is of a collatable data type, the collation is also used at parse
time as the defined collation of the function or operator expression,
in case there is a surrounding expression that requires knowledge of
its collation.
</para>
<para>
The <firstterm>collation derivation</firstterm> of an expression can be
implicit or explicit. This distinction affects how collations are
combined when multiple different collations appear in an
expression. An explicit collation derivation occurs when a
<literal>COLLATE</literal> clause is used; all other collation
derivations are implicit. When multiple collations need to be
combined, for example in a function call, the following rules are
used:
<orderedlist>
<listitem>
<para>
If any input expression has an explicit collation derivation, then
all explicitly derived collations among the input expressions must be
the same, otherwise an error is raised. If any explicitly
derived collation is present, that is the result of the
collation combination.
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
Otherwise, all input expressions must have the same implicit
collation derivation or the default collation. If any non-default
collation is present, that is the result of the collation combination.
Otherwise, the result is the default collation.
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
If there are conflicting non-default implicit collations among the
input expressions, then the combination is deemed to have indeterminate
collation. This is not an error condition unless the particular
function being invoked requires knowledge of the collation it should
apply. If it does, an error will be raised at run-time.
</para>
</listitem>
</orderedlist>
For example, consider this table definition:
<programlisting>
CREATE TABLE test1 (
a text COLLATE "de_DE",
b text COLLATE "es_ES",
...
);
</programlisting>
Then in
<programlisting>
SELECT a &lt; 'foo' FROM test1;
</programlisting>
the <literal>&lt;</literal> comparison is performed according to
<literal>de_DE</literal> rules, because the expression combines an
implicitly derived collation with the default collation. But in
<programlisting>
SELECT a &lt; ('foo' COLLATE "fr_FR") FROM test1;
</programlisting>
the comparison is performed using <literal>fr_FR</literal> rules,
because the explicit collation derivation overrides the implicit one.
Furthermore, given
<programlisting>
SELECT a &lt; b FROM test1;
</programlisting>
the parser cannot determine which collation to apply, since the
<structfield>a</structfield> and <structfield>b</structfield> columns have conflicting
implicit collations. Since the <literal>&lt;</literal> operator
does need to know which collation to use, this will result in an
error. The error can be resolved by attaching an explicit collation
specifier to either input expression, thus:
<programlisting>
SELECT a &lt; b COLLATE "de_DE" FROM test1;
</programlisting>
or equivalently
<programlisting>
SELECT a COLLATE "de_DE" &lt; b FROM test1;
</programlisting>
On the other hand, the structurally similar case
<programlisting>
SELECT a || b FROM test1;
</programlisting>
does not result in an error, because the <literal>||</literal> operator
does not care about collations: its result is the same regardless
of the collation.
</para>
<para>
The collation assigned to a function or operator's combined input
expressions is also considered to apply to the function or operator's
result, if the function or operator delivers a result of a collatable
data type. So, in
<programlisting>
SELECT * FROM test1 ORDER BY a || 'foo';
</programlisting>
the ordering will be done according to <literal>de_DE</literal> rules.
But this query:
<programlisting>
SELECT * FROM test1 ORDER BY a || b;
</programlisting>
results in an error, because even though the <literal>||</literal> operator
doesn't need to know a collation, the <literal>ORDER BY</literal> clause does.
As before, the conflict can be resolved with an explicit collation
specifier:
<programlisting>
SELECT * FROM test1 ORDER BY a || b COLLATE "fr_FR";
</programlisting>
</para>
</sect2>
<sect2 id="collation-managing">
<title>Managing Collations</title>
<para>
A collation is an SQL schema object that maps an SQL name to locales
provided by libraries installed in the operating system. A collation
definition has a <firstterm>provider</firstterm> that specifies which
library supplies the locale data. One standard provider name
is <literal>libc</literal>, which uses the locales provided by the
operating system C library. These are the locales that most tools
provided by the operating system use. Another provider
is <literal>icu</literal>, which uses the external
ICU<indexterm><primary>ICU</primary></indexterm> library. ICU locales can only be
used if support for ICU was configured when PostgreSQL was built.
</para>
<para>
A collation object provided by <literal>libc</literal> maps to a
combination of <symbol>LC_COLLATE</symbol> and <symbol>LC_CTYPE</symbol>
settings, as accepted by the <literal>setlocale()</literal> system library call. (As
the name would suggest, the main purpose of a collation is to set
<symbol>LC_COLLATE</symbol>, which controls the sort order. But
it is rarely necessary in practice to have an
<symbol>LC_CTYPE</symbol> setting that is different from
<symbol>LC_COLLATE</symbol>, so it is more convenient to collect
these under one concept than to create another infrastructure for
setting <symbol>LC_CTYPE</symbol> per expression.) Also,
a <literal>libc</literal> collation
is tied to a character set encoding (see <xref linkend="multibyte"/>).
The same collation name may exist for different encodings.
</para>
<para>
A collation object provided by <literal>icu</literal> maps to a named
collator provided by the ICU library. ICU does not support
separate <quote>collate</quote> and <quote>ctype</quote> settings, so
they are always the same. Also, ICU collations are independent of the
encoding, so there is always only one ICU collation of a given name in
a database.
</para>
<sect3>
<title>Standard Collations</title>
<para>
On all platforms, the collations named <literal>default</literal>,
<literal>C</literal>, and <literal>POSIX</literal> are available. Additional
collations may be available depending on operating system support.
The <literal>default</literal> collation selects the <symbol>LC_COLLATE</symbol>
and <symbol>LC_CTYPE</symbol> values specified at database creation time.
The <literal>C</literal> and <literal>POSIX</literal> collations both specify
<quote>traditional C</quote> behavior, in which only the ASCII letters
<quote><literal>A</literal></quote> through <quote><literal>Z</literal></quote>
are treated as letters, and sorting is done strictly by character
code byte values.
</para>
<para>
Additionally, the SQL standard collation name <literal>ucs_basic</literal>
is available for encoding <literal>UTF8</literal>. It is equivalent
to <literal>C</literal> and sorts by Unicode code point.
</para>
</sect3>
<sect3>
<title>Predefined Collations</title>
<para>
If the operating system provides support for using multiple locales
within a single program (<function>newlocale</function> and related functions),
or if support for ICU is configured,
then when a database cluster is initialized, <command>initdb</command>
populates the system catalog <literal>pg_collation</literal> with
collations based on all the locales it finds in the operating
system at the time.
</para>
<para>
To inspect the currently available locales, use the query <literal>SELECT
* FROM pg_collation</literal>, or the command <command>\dOS+</command>
in <application>psql</application>.
</para>
<sect4>
<title>libc Collations</title>
<para>
For example, the operating system might
provide a locale named <literal>de_DE.utf8</literal>.
<command>initdb</command> would then create a collation named
<literal>de_DE.utf8</literal> for encoding <literal>UTF8</literal>
that has both <symbol>LC_COLLATE</symbol> and
<symbol>LC_CTYPE</symbol> set to <literal>de_DE.utf8</literal>.
It will also create a collation with the <literal>.utf8</literal>
tag stripped off the name. So you could also use the collation
under the name <literal>de_DE</literal>, which is less cumbersome
to write and makes the name less encoding-dependent. Note that,
nevertheless, the initial set of collation names is
platform-dependent.
</para>
<para>
The default set of collations provided by <literal>libc</literal> map
directly to the locales installed in the operating system, which can be
listed using the command <literal>locale -a</literal>. In case
a <literal>libc</literal> collation is needed that has different values
for <symbol>LC_COLLATE</symbol> and <symbol>LC_CTYPE</symbol>, or if new
locales are installed in the operating system after the database system
was initialized, then a new collation may be created using
the <xref linkend="sql-createcollation"/> command.
New operating system locales can also be imported en masse using
the <link linkend="functions-admin-collation"><function>pg_import_system_collations()</function></link> function.
</para>
<para>
Within any particular database, only collations that use that
database's encoding are of interest. Other entries in
<literal>pg_collation</literal> are ignored. Thus, a stripped collation
name such as <literal>de_DE</literal> can be considered unique
within a given database even though it would not be unique globally.
Use of the stripped collation names is recommended, since it will
make one less thing you need to change if you decide to change to
another database encoding. Note however that the <literal>default</literal>,
<literal>C</literal>, and <literal>POSIX</literal> collations can be used regardless of
the database encoding.
</para>
<para>
<productname>PostgreSQL</productname> considers distinct collation
objects to be incompatible even when they have identical properties.
Thus for example,
<programlisting>
SELECT a COLLATE "C" &lt; b COLLATE "POSIX" FROM test1;
</programlisting>
will draw an error even though the <literal>C</literal> and <literal>POSIX</literal>
collations have identical behaviors. Mixing stripped and non-stripped
collation names is therefore not recommended.
</para>
</sect4>
<sect4>
<title>ICU Collations</title>
<para>
With ICU, it is not sensible to enumerate all possible locale names. ICU
uses a particular naming system for locales, but there are many more ways
to name a locale than there are actually distinct locales.
<command>initdb</command> uses the ICU APIs to extract a set of distinct
locales to populate the initial set of collations. Collations provided by
ICU are created in the SQL environment with names in BCP 47 language tag
format, with a <quote>private use</quote>
extension <literal>-x-icu</literal> appended, to distinguish them from
libc locales.
</para>
<para>
Here are some example collations that might be created:
<variablelist>
<varlistentry>
<term><literal>de-x-icu</literal></term>
<listitem>
<para>German collation, default variant</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term><literal>de-AT-x-icu</literal></term>
<listitem>
<para>German collation for Austria, default variant</para>
<para>
(There are also, say, <literal>de-DE-x-icu</literal>
or <literal>de-CH-x-icu</literal>, but as of this writing, they are
equivalent to <literal>de-x-icu</literal>.)
</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term><literal>und-x-icu</literal> (for <quote>undefined</quote>)</term>
<listitem>
<para>
ICU <quote>root</quote> collation. Use this to get a reasonable
language-agnostic sort order.
</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
</variablelist>
</para>
<para>
Some (less frequently used) encodings are not supported by ICU. When the
database encoding is one of these, ICU collation entries
in <literal>pg_collation</literal> are ignored. Attempting to use one
will draw an error along the lines of <quote>collation "de-x-icu" for
encoding "WIN874" does not exist</quote>.
</para>
</sect4>
</sect3>
<sect3 id="collation-create">
<title>Creating New Collation Objects</title>
<para>
If the standard and predefined collations are not sufficient, users can
create their own collation objects using the SQL
command <xref linkend="sql-createcollation"/>.
</para>
<para>
The standard and predefined collations are in the
schema <literal>pg_catalog</literal>, like all predefined objects.
User-defined collations should be created in user schemas. This also
ensures that they are saved by <command>pg_dump</command>.
</para>
<sect4>
<title>libc Collations</title>
<para>
New libc collations can be created like this:
<programlisting>
CREATE COLLATION german (provider = libc, locale = 'de_DE');
</programlisting>
The exact values that are acceptable for the <literal>locale</literal>
clause in this command depend on the operating system. On Unix-like
systems, the command <literal>locale -a</literal> will show a list.
</para>
<para>
Since the predefined libc collations already include all collations
defined in the operating system when the database instance is
initialized, it is not often necessary to manually create new ones.
Reasons might be if a different naming system is desired (in which case
see also <xref linkend="collation-copy"/>) or if the operating system has
been upgraded to provide new locale definitions (in which case see
also <link linkend="functions-admin-collation"><function>pg_import_system_collations()</function></link>).
</para>
</sect4>
<sect4>
<title>ICU Collations</title>
<para>
ICU allows collations to be customized beyond the basic language+country
set that is preloaded by <command>initdb</command>. Users are encouraged
to define their own collation objects that make use of these facilities to
suit the sorting behavior to their requirements.
See <ulink url="http://userguide.icu-project.org/locale"></ulink>
and <ulink url="http://userguide.icu-project.org/collation/api"></ulink> for
information on ICU locale naming. The set of acceptable names and
attributes depends on the particular ICU version.
</para>
<para>
Here are some examples:
<variablelist>
<varlistentry>
<term><literal>CREATE COLLATION "de-u-co-phonebk-x-icu" (provider = icu, locale = 'de-u-co-phonebk');</literal></term>
<term><literal>CREATE COLLATION "de-u-co-phonebk-x-icu" (provider = icu, locale = 'de@collation=phonebook');</literal></term>
<listitem>
<para>German collation with phone book collation type</para>
<para>
The first example selects the ICU locale using a <quote>language
tag</quote> per BCP 47. The second example uses the traditional
ICU-specific locale syntax. The first style is preferred going
forward, but it is not supported by older ICU versions.
</para>
<para>
Note that you can name the collation objects in the SQL environment
anything you want. In this example, we follow the naming style that
the predefined collations use, which in turn also follow BCP 47, but
that is not required for user-defined collations.
</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term><literal>CREATE COLLATION "und-u-co-emoji-x-icu" (provider = icu, locale = 'und-u-co-emoji');</literal></term>
<term><literal>CREATE COLLATION "und-u-co-emoji-x-icu" (provider = icu, locale = '@collation=emoji');</literal></term>
<listitem>
<para>
Root collation with Emoji collation type, per Unicode Technical Standard #51
</para>
<para>
Observe how in the traditional ICU locale naming system, the root
locale is selected by an empty string.
</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term><literal>CREATE COLLATION digitslast (provider = icu, locale = 'en-u-kr-latn-digit');</literal></term>
<term><literal>CREATE COLLATION digitslast (provider = icu, locale = 'en@colReorder=latn-digit');</literal></term>
<listitem>
<para>
Sort digits after Latin letters. (The default is digits before letters.)
</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term><literal>CREATE COLLATION upperfirst (provider = icu, locale = 'en-u-kf-upper');</literal></term>
<term><literal>CREATE COLLATION upperfirst (provider = icu, locale = 'en@colCaseFirst=upper');</literal></term>
<listitem>
<para>
Sort upper-case letters before lower-case letters. (The default is
lower-case letters first.)
</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term><literal>CREATE COLLATION special (provider = icu, locale = 'en-u-kf-upper-kr-latn-digit');</literal></term>
<term><literal>CREATE COLLATION special (provider = icu, locale = 'en@colCaseFirst=upper;colReorder=latn-digit');</literal></term>
<listitem>
<para>
Combines both of the above options.
</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term><literal>CREATE COLLATION numeric (provider = icu, locale = 'en-u-kn-true');</literal></term>
<term><literal>CREATE COLLATION numeric (provider = icu, locale = 'en@colNumeric=yes');</literal></term>
<listitem>
<para>
Numeric ordering, sorts sequences of digits by their numeric value,
for example: <literal>A-21</literal> &lt; <literal>A-123</literal>
(also known as natural sort).
</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
</variablelist>
See <ulink url="https://www.unicode.org/reports/tr35/tr35-collation.html">Unicode
Technical Standard #35</ulink>
and <ulink url="https://tools.ietf.org/html/bcp47">BCP 47</ulink> for
details. The list of possible collation types (<literal>co</literal>
subtag) can be found in
the <ulink url="https://github.com/unicode-org/cldr/blob/master/common/bcp47/collation.xml">CLDR
repository</ulink>.
The <ulink url="https://ssl.icu-project.org/icu-bin/locexp">ICU Locale
Explorer</ulink> can be used to check the details of a particular locale
definition. The examples using the <literal>k*</literal> subtags require
at least ICU version 54.
</para>
<para>
Note that while this system allows creating collations that <quote>ignore
case</quote> or <quote>ignore accents</quote> or similar (using the
<literal>ks</literal> key), in order for such collations to act in a
truly case- or accent-insensitive manner, they also need to be declared as not
<firstterm>deterministic</firstterm> in <command>CREATE COLLATION</command>;
see <xref linkend="collation-nondeterministic"/>.
Otherwise, any strings that compare equal according to the collation but
are not byte-wise equal will be sorted according to their byte values.
</para>
<note>
<para>
By design, ICU will accept almost any string as a locale name and match
it to the closest locale it can provide, using the fallback procedure
described in its documentation. Thus, there will be no direct feedback
if a collation specification is composed using features that the given
ICU installation does not actually support. It is therefore recommended
to create application-level test cases to check that the collation
definitions satisfy one's requirements.
</para>
</note>
</sect4>
<sect4 id="collation-copy">
<title>Copying Collations</title>
<para>
The command <xref linkend="sql-createcollation"/> can also be used to
create a new collation from an existing collation, which can be useful to
be able to use operating-system-independent collation names in
applications, create compatibility names, or use an ICU-provided collation
under a more readable name. For example:
<programlisting>
CREATE COLLATION german FROM "de_DE";
CREATE COLLATION french FROM "fr-x-icu";
</programlisting>
</para>
</sect4>
</sect3>
<sect3 id="collation-nondeterministic">
<title>Nondeterministic Collations</title>
<para>
A collation is either <firstterm>deterministic</firstterm> or
<firstterm>nondeterministic</firstterm>. A deterministic collation uses
deterministic comparisons, which means that it considers strings to be
equal only if they consist of the same byte sequence. Nondeterministic
comparison may determine strings to be equal even if they consist of
different bytes. Typical situations include case-insensitive comparison,
accent-insensitive comparison, as well as comparison of strings in
different Unicode normal forms. It is up to the collation provider to
actually implement such insensitive comparisons; the deterministic flag
only determines whether ties are to be broken using bytewise comparison.
See also <ulink url="https://www.unicode.org/reports/tr10">Unicode Technical
Standard 10</ulink> for more information on the terminology.
</para>
<para>
To create a nondeterministic collation, specify the property
<literal>deterministic = false</literal> to <command>CREATE
COLLATION</command>, for example:
<programlisting>
CREATE COLLATION ndcoll (provider = icu, locale = 'und', deterministic = false);
</programlisting>
This example would use the standard Unicode collation in a
nondeterministic way. In particular, this would allow strings in
different normal forms to be compared correctly. More interesting
examples make use of the ICU customization facilities explained above.
For example:
<programlisting>
CREATE COLLATION case_insensitive (provider = icu, locale = 'und-u-ks-level2', deterministic = false);
CREATE COLLATION ignore_accents (provider = icu, locale = 'und-u-ks-level1-kc-true', deterministic = false);
</programlisting>
</para>
<para>
All standard and predefined collations are deterministic, all
user-defined collations are deterministic by default. While
nondeterministic collations give a more <quote>correct</quote> behavior,
especially when considering the full power of Unicode and its many
special cases, they also have some drawbacks. Foremost, their use leads
to a performance penalty. Also, certain operations are not possible with
nondeterministic collations, such as pattern matching operations.
Therefore, they should be used only in cases where they are specifically
wanted.
</para>
</sect3>
</sect2>
</sect1>
<sect1 id="multibyte">
<title>Character Set Support</title>
<indexterm zone="multibyte"><primary>character set</primary></indexterm>
<para>
The character set support in <productname>PostgreSQL</productname>
allows you to store text in a variety of character sets (also called
encodings), including
single-byte character sets such as the ISO 8859 series and
multiple-byte character sets such as <acronym>EUC</acronym> (Extended Unix
Code), UTF-8, and Mule internal code. All supported character sets
can be used transparently by clients, but a few are not supported
for use within the server (that is, as a server-side encoding).
The default character set is selected while
initializing your <productname>PostgreSQL</productname> database
cluster using <command>initdb</command>. It can be overridden when you
create a database, so you can have multiple
databases each with a different character set.
</para>
<para>
An important restriction, however, is that each database's character set
must be compatible with the database's <envar>LC_CTYPE</envar> (character
classification) and <envar>LC_COLLATE</envar> (string sort order) locale
settings. For <literal>C</literal> or
<literal>POSIX</literal> locale, any character set is allowed, but for other
libc-provided locales there is only one character set that will work
correctly.
(On Windows, however, UTF-8 encoding can be used with any locale.)
If you have ICU support configured, ICU-provided locales can be used
with most but not all server-side encodings.
</para>
<sect2 id="multibyte-charset-supported">
<title>Supported Character Sets</title>
<para>
<xref linkend="charset-table"/> shows the character sets available
for use in <productname>PostgreSQL</productname>.
</para>
<table id="charset-table">
<title><productname>PostgreSQL</productname> Character Sets</title>
<tgroup cols="7">
<thead>
<row>
<entry>Name</entry>
<entry>Description</entry>
<entry>Language</entry>
<entry>Server?</entry>
<entry>ICU?</entry>
<!--
The Bytes/Char field is populated by looking at the values returned
by pg_wchar_table.mblen function for each encoding.
-->
<entry>Bytes/Char</entry>
<entry>Aliases</entry>
</row>
</thead>
<tbody>
<row>
<entry><literal>BIG5</literal></entry>
<entry>Big Five</entry>
<entry>Traditional Chinese</entry>
<entry>No</entry>
<entry>No</entry>
<entry>1-2</entry>
<entry><literal>WIN950</literal>, <literal>Windows950</literal></entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>EUC_CN</literal></entry>
<entry>Extended UNIX Code-CN</entry>
<entry>Simplified Chinese</entry>
<entry>Yes</entry>
<entry>Yes</entry>
<entry>1-3</entry>
<entry></entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>EUC_JP</literal></entry>
<entry>Extended UNIX Code-JP</entry>
<entry>Japanese</entry>
<entry>Yes</entry>
<entry>Yes</entry>
<entry>1-3</entry>
<entry></entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>EUC_JIS_2004</literal></entry>
<entry>Extended UNIX Code-JP, JIS X 0213</entry>
<entry>Japanese</entry>
<entry>Yes</entry>
<entry>No</entry>
<entry>1-3</entry>
<entry></entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>EUC_KR</literal></entry>
<entry>Extended UNIX Code-KR</entry>
<entry>Korean</entry>
<entry>Yes</entry>
<entry>Yes</entry>
<entry>1-3</entry>
<entry></entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>EUC_TW</literal></entry>
<entry>Extended UNIX Code-TW</entry>
<entry>Traditional Chinese, Taiwanese</entry>
<entry>Yes</entry>
<entry>Yes</entry>
<entry>1-3</entry>
<entry></entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>GB18030</literal></entry>
<entry>National Standard</entry>
<entry>Chinese</entry>
<entry>No</entry>
<entry>No</entry>
<entry>1-4</entry>
<entry></entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>GBK</literal></entry>
<entry>Extended National Standard</entry>
<entry>Simplified Chinese</entry>
<entry>No</entry>
<entry>No</entry>
<entry>1-2</entry>
<entry><literal>WIN936</literal>, <literal>Windows936</literal></entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>ISO_8859_5</literal></entry>
<entry>ISO 8859-5, <acronym>ECMA</acronym> 113</entry>
<entry>Latin/Cyrillic</entry>
<entry>Yes</entry>
<entry>Yes</entry>
<entry>1</entry>
<entry></entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>ISO_8859_6</literal></entry>
<entry>ISO 8859-6, <acronym>ECMA</acronym> 114</entry>
<entry>Latin/Arabic</entry>
<entry>Yes</entry>
<entry>Yes</entry>
<entry>1</entry>
<entry></entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>ISO_8859_7</literal></entry>
<entry>ISO 8859-7, <acronym>ECMA</acronym> 118</entry>
<entry>Latin/Greek</entry>
<entry>Yes</entry>
<entry>Yes</entry>
<entry>1</entry>
<entry></entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>ISO_8859_8</literal></entry>
<entry>ISO 8859-8, <acronym>ECMA</acronym> 121</entry>
<entry>Latin/Hebrew</entry>
<entry>Yes</entry>
<entry>Yes</entry>
<entry>1</entry>
<entry></entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>JOHAB</literal></entry>
<entry><acronym>JOHAB</acronym></entry>
<entry>Korean (Hangul)</entry>
<entry>No</entry>
<entry>No</entry>
<entry>1-3</entry>
<entry></entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>KOI8R</literal></entry>
<entry><acronym>KOI</acronym>8-R</entry>
<entry>Cyrillic (Russian)</entry>
<entry>Yes</entry>
<entry>Yes</entry>
<entry>1</entry>
<entry><literal>KOI8</literal></entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>KOI8U</literal></entry>
<entry><acronym>KOI</acronym>8-U</entry>
<entry>Cyrillic (Ukrainian)</entry>
<entry>Yes</entry>
<entry>Yes</entry>
<entry>1</entry>
<entry></entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>LATIN1</literal></entry>
<entry>ISO 8859-1, <acronym>ECMA</acronym> 94</entry>
<entry>Western European</entry>
<entry>Yes</entry>
<entry>Yes</entry>
<entry>1</entry>
<entry><literal>ISO88591</literal></entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>LATIN2</literal></entry>
<entry>ISO 8859-2, <acronym>ECMA</acronym> 94</entry>
<entry>Central European</entry>
<entry>Yes</entry>
<entry>Yes</entry>
<entry>1</entry>
<entry><literal>ISO88592</literal></entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>LATIN3</literal></entry>
<entry>ISO 8859-3, <acronym>ECMA</acronym> 94</entry>
<entry>South European</entry>
<entry>Yes</entry>
<entry>Yes</entry>
<entry>1</entry>
<entry><literal>ISO88593</literal></entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>LATIN4</literal></entry>
<entry>ISO 8859-4, <acronym>ECMA</acronym> 94</entry>
<entry>North European</entry>
<entry>Yes</entry>
<entry>Yes</entry>
<entry>1</entry>
<entry><literal>ISO88594</literal></entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>LATIN5</literal></entry>
<entry>ISO 8859-9, <acronym>ECMA</acronym> 128</entry>
<entry>Turkish</entry>
<entry>Yes</entry>
<entry>Yes</entry>
<entry>1</entry>
<entry><literal>ISO88599</literal></entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>LATIN6</literal></entry>
<entry>ISO 8859-10, <acronym>ECMA</acronym> 144</entry>
<entry>Nordic</entry>
<entry>Yes</entry>
<entry>Yes</entry>
<entry>1</entry>
<entry><literal>ISO885910</literal></entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>LATIN7</literal></entry>
<entry>ISO 8859-13</entry>
<entry>Baltic</entry>
<entry>Yes</entry>
<entry>Yes</entry>
<entry>1</entry>
<entry><literal>ISO885913</literal></entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>LATIN8</literal></entry>
<entry>ISO 8859-14</entry>
<entry>Celtic</entry>
<entry>Yes</entry>
<entry>Yes</entry>
<entry>1</entry>
<entry><literal>ISO885914</literal></entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>LATIN9</literal></entry>
<entry>ISO 8859-15</entry>
<entry>LATIN1 with Euro and accents</entry>
<entry>Yes</entry>
<entry>Yes</entry>
<entry>1</entry>
<entry><literal>ISO885915</literal></entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>LATIN10</literal></entry>
<entry>ISO 8859-16, <acronym>ASRO</acronym> SR 14111</entry>
<entry>Romanian</entry>
<entry>Yes</entry>
<entry>No</entry>
<entry>1</entry>
<entry><literal>ISO885916</literal></entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>MULE_INTERNAL</literal></entry>
<entry>Mule internal code</entry>
<entry>Multilingual Emacs</entry>
<entry>Yes</entry>
<entry>No</entry>
<entry>1-4</entry>
<entry></entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>SJIS</literal></entry>
<entry>Shift JIS</entry>
<entry>Japanese</entry>
<entry>No</entry>
<entry>No</entry>
<entry>1-2</entry>
<entry><literal>Mskanji</literal>, <literal>ShiftJIS</literal>, <literal>WIN932</literal>, <literal>Windows932</literal></entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>SHIFT_JIS_2004</literal></entry>
<entry>Shift JIS, JIS X 0213</entry>
<entry>Japanese</entry>
<entry>No</entry>
<entry>No</entry>
<entry>1-2</entry>
<entry></entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>SQL_ASCII</literal></entry>
<entry>unspecified (see text)</entry>
<entry><emphasis>any</emphasis></entry>
<entry>Yes</entry>
<entry>No</entry>
<entry>1</entry>
<entry></entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>UHC</literal></entry>
<entry>Unified Hangul Code</entry>
<entry>Korean</entry>
<entry>No</entry>
<entry>No</entry>
<entry>1-2</entry>
<entry><literal>WIN949</literal>, <literal>Windows949</literal></entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>UTF8</literal></entry>
<entry>Unicode, 8-bit</entry>
<entry><emphasis>all</emphasis></entry>
<entry>Yes</entry>
<entry>Yes</entry>
<entry>1-4</entry>
<entry><literal>Unicode</literal></entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>WIN866</literal></entry>
<entry>Windows CP866</entry>
<entry>Cyrillic</entry>
<entry>Yes</entry>
<entry>Yes</entry>
<entry>1</entry>
<entry><literal>ALT</literal></entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>WIN874</literal></entry>
<entry>Windows CP874</entry>
<entry>Thai</entry>
<entry>Yes</entry>
<entry>No</entry>
<entry>1</entry>
<entry></entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>WIN1250</literal></entry>
<entry>Windows CP1250</entry>
<entry>Central European</entry>
<entry>Yes</entry>
<entry>Yes</entry>
<entry>1</entry>
<entry></entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>WIN1251</literal></entry>
<entry>Windows CP1251</entry>
<entry>Cyrillic</entry>
<entry>Yes</entry>
<entry>Yes</entry>
<entry>1</entry>
<entry><literal>WIN</literal></entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>WIN1252</literal></entry>
<entry>Windows CP1252</entry>
<entry>Western European</entry>
<entry>Yes</entry>
<entry>Yes</entry>
<entry>1</entry>
<entry></entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>WIN1253</literal></entry>
<entry>Windows CP1253</entry>
<entry>Greek</entry>
<entry>Yes</entry>
<entry>Yes</entry>
<entry>1</entry>
<entry></entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>WIN1254</literal></entry>
<entry>Windows CP1254</entry>
<entry>Turkish</entry>
<entry>Yes</entry>
<entry>Yes</entry>
<entry>1</entry>
<entry></entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>WIN1255</literal></entry>
<entry>Windows CP1255</entry>
<entry>Hebrew</entry>
<entry>Yes</entry>
<entry>Yes</entry>
<entry>1</entry>
<entry></entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>WIN1256</literal></entry>
<entry>Windows CP1256</entry>
<entry>Arabic</entry>
<entry>Yes</entry>
<entry>Yes</entry>
<entry>1</entry>
<entry></entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>WIN1257</literal></entry>
<entry>Windows CP1257</entry>
<entry>Baltic</entry>
<entry>Yes</entry>
<entry>Yes</entry>
<entry>1</entry>
<entry></entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>WIN1258</literal></entry>
<entry>Windows CP1258</entry>
<entry>Vietnamese</entry>
<entry>Yes</entry>
<entry>Yes</entry>
<entry>1</entry>
<entry><literal>ABC</literal>, <literal>TCVN</literal>, <literal>TCVN5712</literal>, <literal>VSCII</literal></entry>
</row>
</tbody>
</tgroup>
</table>
<para>
Not all client <acronym>API</acronym>s support all the listed character sets. For example, the
<productname>PostgreSQL</productname>
JDBC driver does not support <literal>MULE_INTERNAL</literal>, <literal>LATIN6</literal>,
<literal>LATIN8</literal>, and <literal>LATIN10</literal>.
</para>
<para>
The <literal>SQL_ASCII</literal> setting behaves considerably differently
from the other settings. When the server character set is
<literal>SQL_ASCII</literal>, the server interprets byte values 0-127
according to the ASCII standard, while byte values 128-255 are taken
as uninterpreted characters. No encoding conversion will be done when
the setting is <literal>SQL_ASCII</literal>. Thus, this setting is not so
much a declaration that a specific encoding is in use, as a declaration
of ignorance about the encoding. In most cases, if you are
working with any non-ASCII data, it is unwise to use the
<literal>SQL_ASCII</literal> setting because
<productname>PostgreSQL</productname> will be unable to help you by
converting or validating non-ASCII characters.
</para>
</sect2>
<sect2>
<title>Setting the Character Set</title>
<para>
<command>initdb</command> defines the default character set (encoding)
for a <productname>PostgreSQL</productname> cluster. For example,
<screen>
initdb -E EUC_JP
</screen>
sets the default character set to
<literal>EUC_JP</literal> (Extended Unix Code for Japanese). You
can use <option>--encoding</option> instead of
<option>-E</option> if you prefer longer option strings.
If no <option>-E</option> or <option>--encoding</option> option is
given, <command>initdb</command> attempts to determine the appropriate
encoding to use based on the specified or default locale.
</para>
<para>
You can specify a non-default encoding at database creation time,
provided that the encoding is compatible with the selected locale:
<screen>
createdb -E EUC_KR -T template0 --lc-collate=ko_KR.euckr --lc-ctype=ko_KR.euckr korean
</screen>
This will create a database named <literal>korean</literal> that
uses the character set <literal>EUC_KR</literal>, and locale <literal>ko_KR</literal>.
Another way to accomplish this is to use this SQL command:
<programlisting>
CREATE DATABASE korean WITH ENCODING 'EUC_KR' LC_COLLATE='ko_KR.euckr' LC_CTYPE='ko_KR.euckr' TEMPLATE=template0;
</programlisting>
Notice that the above commands specify copying the <literal>template0</literal>
database. When copying any other database, the encoding and locale
settings cannot be changed from those of the source database, because
that might result in corrupt data. For more information see
<xref linkend="manage-ag-templatedbs"/>.
</para>
<para>
The encoding for a database is stored in the system catalog
<literal>pg_database</literal>. You can see it by using the
<command>psql</command> <option>-l</option> option or the
<command>\l</command> command.
<screen>
$ <userinput>psql -l</userinput>
List of databases
Name | Owner | Encoding | Collation | Ctype | Access Privileges
-----------+----------+-----------+-------------+-------------+-------------------------------------
clocaledb | hlinnaka | SQL_ASCII | C | C |
englishdb | hlinnaka | UTF8 | en_GB.UTF8 | en_GB.UTF8 |
japanese | hlinnaka | UTF8 | ja_JP.UTF8 | ja_JP.UTF8 |
korean | hlinnaka | EUC_KR | ko_KR.euckr | ko_KR.euckr |
postgres | hlinnaka | UTF8 | fi_FI.UTF8 | fi_FI.UTF8 |
template0 | hlinnaka | UTF8 | fi_FI.UTF8 | fi_FI.UTF8 | {=c/hlinnaka,hlinnaka=CTc/hlinnaka}
template1 | hlinnaka | UTF8 | fi_FI.UTF8 | fi_FI.UTF8 | {=c/hlinnaka,hlinnaka=CTc/hlinnaka}
(7 rows)
</screen>
</para>
<important>
<para>
On most modern operating systems, <productname>PostgreSQL</productname>
can determine which character set is implied by the <envar>LC_CTYPE</envar>
setting, and it will enforce that only the matching database encoding is
used. On older systems it is your responsibility to ensure that you use
the encoding expected by the locale you have selected. A mistake in
this area is likely to lead to strange behavior of locale-dependent
operations such as sorting.
</para>
<para>
<productname>PostgreSQL</productname> will allow superusers to create
databases with <literal>SQL_ASCII</literal> encoding even when
<envar>LC_CTYPE</envar> is not <literal>C</literal> or <literal>POSIX</literal>. As noted
above, <literal>SQL_ASCII</literal> does not enforce that the data stored in
the database has any particular encoding, and so this choice poses risks
of locale-dependent misbehavior. Using this combination of settings is
deprecated and may someday be forbidden altogether.
</para>
</important>
</sect2>
<sect2>
<title>Automatic Character Set Conversion Between Server and Client</title>
<para>
<productname>PostgreSQL</productname> supports automatic
character set conversion between server and client for certain
character set combinations. The conversion information is stored in the
<literal>pg_conversion</literal> system catalog. <productname>PostgreSQL</productname>
comes with some predefined conversions, as shown in <xref
linkend="multibyte-translation-table"/>. You can create a new
conversion using the SQL command <command>CREATE CONVERSION</command>.
</para>
<table id="multibyte-translation-table">
<title>Client/Server Character Set Conversions</title>
<tgroup cols="2">
<thead>
<row>
<entry>Server Character Set</entry>
<entry>Available Client Character Sets</entry>
</row>
</thead>
<tbody>
<row>
<entry><literal>BIG5</literal></entry>
<entry><emphasis>not supported as a server encoding</emphasis>
</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>EUC_CN</literal></entry>
<entry><emphasis>EUC_CN</emphasis>,
<literal>MULE_INTERNAL</literal>,
<literal>UTF8</literal>
</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>EUC_JP</literal></entry>
<entry><emphasis>EUC_JP</emphasis>,
<literal>MULE_INTERNAL</literal>,
<literal>SJIS</literal>,
<literal>UTF8</literal>
</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>EUC_JIS_2004</literal></entry>
<entry><emphasis>EUC_JIS_2004</emphasis>,
<literal>SHIFT_JIS_2004</literal>,
<literal>UTF8</literal>
</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>EUC_KR</literal></entry>
<entry><emphasis>EUC_KR</emphasis>,
<literal>MULE_INTERNAL</literal>,
<literal>UTF8</literal>
</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>EUC_TW</literal></entry>
<entry><emphasis>EUC_TW</emphasis>,
<literal>BIG5</literal>,
<literal>MULE_INTERNAL</literal>,
<literal>UTF8</literal>
</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>GB18030</literal></entry>
<entry><emphasis>not supported as a server encoding</emphasis>
</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>GBK</literal></entry>
<entry><emphasis>not supported as a server encoding</emphasis>
</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>ISO_8859_5</literal></entry>
<entry><emphasis>ISO_8859_5</emphasis>,
<literal>KOI8R</literal>,
<literal>MULE_INTERNAL</literal>,
<literal>UTF8</literal>,
<literal>WIN866</literal>,
<literal>WIN1251</literal>
</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>ISO_8859_6</literal></entry>
<entry><emphasis>ISO_8859_6</emphasis>,
<literal>UTF8</literal>
</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>ISO_8859_7</literal></entry>
<entry><emphasis>ISO_8859_7</emphasis>,
<literal>UTF8</literal>
</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>ISO_8859_8</literal></entry>
<entry><emphasis>ISO_8859_8</emphasis>,
<literal>UTF8</literal>
</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>JOHAB</literal></entry>
<entry><emphasis>not supported as a server encoding</emphasis>
</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>KOI8R</literal></entry>
<entry><emphasis>KOI8R</emphasis>,
<literal>ISO_8859_5</literal>,
<literal>MULE_INTERNAL</literal>,
<literal>UTF8</literal>,
<literal>WIN866</literal>,
<literal>WIN1251</literal>
</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>KOI8U</literal></entry>
<entry><emphasis>KOI8U</emphasis>,
<literal>UTF8</literal>
</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>LATIN1</literal></entry>
<entry><emphasis>LATIN1</emphasis>,
<literal>MULE_INTERNAL</literal>,
<literal>UTF8</literal>
</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>LATIN2</literal></entry>
<entry><emphasis>LATIN2</emphasis>,
<literal>MULE_INTERNAL</literal>,
<literal>UTF8</literal>,
<literal>WIN1250</literal>
</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>LATIN3</literal></entry>
<entry><emphasis>LATIN3</emphasis>,
<literal>MULE_INTERNAL</literal>,
<literal>UTF8</literal>
</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>LATIN4</literal></entry>
<entry><emphasis>LATIN4</emphasis>,
<literal>MULE_INTERNAL</literal>,
<literal>UTF8</literal>
</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>LATIN5</literal></entry>
<entry><emphasis>LATIN5</emphasis>,
<literal>UTF8</literal>
</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>LATIN6</literal></entry>
<entry><emphasis>LATIN6</emphasis>,
<literal>UTF8</literal>
</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>LATIN7</literal></entry>
<entry><emphasis>LATIN7</emphasis>,
<literal>UTF8</literal>
</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>LATIN8</literal></entry>
<entry><emphasis>LATIN8</emphasis>,
<literal>UTF8</literal>
</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>LATIN9</literal></entry>
<entry><emphasis>LATIN9</emphasis>,
<literal>UTF8</literal>
</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>LATIN10</literal></entry>
<entry><emphasis>LATIN10</emphasis>,
<literal>UTF8</literal>
</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>MULE_INTERNAL</literal></entry>
<entry><emphasis>MULE_INTERNAL</emphasis>,
<literal>BIG5</literal>,
<literal>EUC_CN</literal>,
<literal>EUC_JP</literal>,
<literal>EUC_KR</literal>,
<literal>EUC_TW</literal>,
<literal>ISO_8859_5</literal>,
<literal>KOI8R</literal>,
<literal>LATIN1</literal> to <literal>LATIN4</literal>,
<literal>SJIS</literal>,
<literal>WIN866</literal>,
<literal>WIN1250</literal>,
<literal>WIN1251</literal>
</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>SJIS</literal></entry>
<entry><emphasis>not supported as a server encoding</emphasis>
</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>SHIFT_JIS_2004</literal></entry>
<entry><emphasis>not supported as a server encoding</emphasis>
</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>SQL_ASCII</literal></entry>
<entry><emphasis>any (no conversion will be performed)</emphasis>
</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>UHC</literal></entry>
<entry><emphasis>not supported as a server encoding</emphasis>
</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>UTF8</literal></entry>
<entry><emphasis>all supported encodings</emphasis>
</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>WIN866</literal></entry>
<entry><emphasis>WIN866</emphasis>,
<literal>ISO_8859_5</literal>,
<literal>KOI8R</literal>,
<literal>MULE_INTERNAL</literal>,
<literal>UTF8</literal>,
<literal>WIN1251</literal>
</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>WIN874</literal></entry>
<entry><emphasis>WIN874</emphasis>,
<literal>UTF8</literal>
</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>WIN1250</literal></entry>
<entry><emphasis>WIN1250</emphasis>,
<literal>LATIN2</literal>,
<literal>MULE_INTERNAL</literal>,
<literal>UTF8</literal>
</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>WIN1251</literal></entry>
<entry><emphasis>WIN1251</emphasis>,
<literal>ISO_8859_5</literal>,
<literal>KOI8R</literal>,
<literal>MULE_INTERNAL</literal>,
<literal>UTF8</literal>,
<literal>WIN866</literal>
</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>WIN1252</literal></entry>
<entry><emphasis>WIN1252</emphasis>,
<literal>UTF8</literal>
</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>WIN1253</literal></entry>
<entry><emphasis>WIN1253</emphasis>,
<literal>UTF8</literal>
</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>WIN1254</literal></entry>
<entry><emphasis>WIN1254</emphasis>,
<literal>UTF8</literal>
</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>WIN1255</literal></entry>
<entry><emphasis>WIN1255</emphasis>,
<literal>UTF8</literal>
</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>WIN1256</literal></entry>
<entry><emphasis>WIN1256</emphasis>,
<literal>UTF8</literal>
</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>WIN1257</literal></entry>
<entry><emphasis>WIN1257</emphasis>,
<literal>UTF8</literal>
</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>WIN1258</literal></entry>
<entry><emphasis>WIN1258</emphasis>,
<literal>UTF8</literal>
</entry>
</row>
</tbody>
</tgroup>
</table>
<para>
To enable automatic character set conversion, you have to
tell <productname>PostgreSQL</productname> the character set
(encoding) you would like to use in the client. There are several
ways to accomplish this:
<itemizedlist>
<listitem>
<para>
Using the <command>\encoding</command> command in
<application>psql</application>.
<command>\encoding</command> allows you to change client
encoding on the fly. For
example, to change the encoding to <literal>SJIS</literal>, type:
<programlisting>
\encoding SJIS
</programlisting>
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
<application>libpq</application> (<xref linkend="libpq-control"/>) has functions to control the client encoding.
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
Using <command>SET client_encoding TO</command>.
Setting the client encoding can be done with this SQL command:
<programlisting>
SET CLIENT_ENCODING TO '<replaceable>value</replaceable>';
</programlisting>
Also you can use the standard SQL syntax <literal>SET NAMES</literal>
for this purpose:
<programlisting>
SET NAMES '<replaceable>value</replaceable>';
</programlisting>
To query the current client encoding:
<programlisting>
SHOW client_encoding;
</programlisting>
To return to the default encoding:
<programlisting>
RESET client_encoding;
</programlisting>
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
Using <envar>PGCLIENTENCODING</envar>. If the environment variable
<envar>PGCLIENTENCODING</envar> is defined in the client's
environment, that client encoding is automatically selected
when a connection to the server is made. (This can
subsequently be overridden using any of the other methods
mentioned above.)
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
Using the configuration variable <xref
linkend="guc-client-encoding"/>. If the
<varname>client_encoding</varname> variable is set, that client
encoding is automatically selected when a connection to the
server is made. (This can subsequently be overridden using any
of the other methods mentioned above.)
</para>
</listitem>
</itemizedlist>
</para>
<para>
If the conversion of a particular character is not possible
&mdash; suppose you chose <literal>EUC_JP</literal> for the
server and <literal>LATIN1</literal> for the client, and some
Japanese characters are returned that do not have a representation in
<literal>LATIN1</literal> &mdash; an error is reported.
</para>
<para>
If the client character set is defined as <literal>SQL_ASCII</literal>,
encoding conversion is disabled, regardless of the server's character
set. (However, if the server's character set is
not <literal>SQL_ASCII</literal>, the server will still check that
incoming data is valid for that encoding; so the net effect is as
though the client character set were the same as the server's.)
Just as for the server, use of <literal>SQL_ASCII</literal> is unwise
unless you are working with all-ASCII data.
</para>
</sect2>
<sect2>
<title>Further Reading</title>
<para>
These are good sources to start learning about various kinds of encoding
systems.
<variablelist>
<varlistentry>
<term><citetitle>CJKV Information Processing: Chinese, Japanese, Korean &amp; Vietnamese Computing</citetitle></term>
<listitem>
<para>
Contains detailed explanations of <literal>EUC_JP</literal>,
<literal>EUC_CN</literal>, <literal>EUC_KR</literal>,
<literal>EUC_TW</literal>.
</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term><ulink url="https://www.unicode.org/"></ulink></term>
<listitem>
<para>
The web site of the Unicode Consortium.
</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term>RFC 3629</term>
<listitem>
<para>
<acronym>UTF</acronym>-8 (8-bit UCS/Unicode Transformation
Format) is defined here.
</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
</variablelist>
</para>
</sect2>
</sect1>
</chapter>