Tom Lane wrote: > Martin Pitt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: >> However, if I use 8.2 programs with the 8.3 library, things start to >> become weird: > >> $ # kill postgres instance >> $ rm -rf /tmp/x; LC_ALL=3Den_US.UTF-8 /usr/lib/postgresql/8.2/bin/initdb = >> --encoding UTF8 -D /tmp/x > > Does anything other than initdb get weird? > > For the most part I believe it's the case that libpq's idea of the enum > values is independent of the backend's. I think the issue here is that > initdb is (mis) using libpq's pg_char_to_encoding, etc, and combining > those functions with its own idea of the meanings of the enum values. > > Maybe we should stop exporting pg_char_to_encoding and so on from libpq, > though I wonder if that would break any clients.
I'm in favor not exporting them in the long term, a normal client program should have no business calling those functions. Note that we've also added PG_EUC_JIS_2004 and PG_SJIS (client-only) to the enumeration. That means that all the previous client-only encodings have been shifted by two. If we want to keep the functions compatible when possible, we could: * replace JOHAB in the enum with a deprecated placeholder, and * move PG_JOHAB to the end of the enum, instead of the shoving it in the middle of client-only encodings, and * move PG_SJIS to the end, to shift the rest of the client-only encodings by one, to compensate the addition of the new PG_EUC_JIS_2004 encoding. PG_JOHAB and PG_SJIS would have different encoding identifiers than in 8.2, but the rest would stay put. But OTOH, I feel we should just stop exporting them now; I don't think there's a legitimate use case for a client application to use them. The best I can think of is an application that would want to know what encodings there is, and show them in a menu or something. But even then, you shouldn't use the numeric values, just the encoding names. -- Heikki Linnakangas EnterpriseDB http://www.enterprisedb.com ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 7: You can help support the PostgreSQL project by donating at http://www.postgresql.org/about/donate
