Andrew wrote: >> According to RFC 2279, the Euro, >> Unicode code point 0x20AC = 0010 0000 1010 1100, >> will be encoded to 1110 0010 1000 0010 1010 1100 = 0xE282AC. >> >> IMHO this is the only good and intuitive way for CHR() and ASCII(). > > It is beyond ludicrous for functions like chr() or ascii() to > convert a Euro sign to 0xE282AC rather than 0x20AC. "Intuitive"? There > is _NO SUCH THING_ as 0xE282AC as a representation of a Unicode character > - there is either the code point, 0x20AC (which is a _number_), or the > sequences of _bytes_ that represent that code point in various encodings, > of which the three-byte sequence 0xE2 0x82 0xAC is the one used in UTF-8.
Yes, 0xE2 0x82 0xAC is the representation in UTF-8, and UTF-8 is the database encoding in use. > Functions like chr() and ascii() should be dealing with the _number_ of the > code point, not with its representation in transfer encodings. I think that we have a fundamental difference. As far as I know, the word "code point" is only used in UNICODE and is the first column in the list http://www.unicode.org/Public/UNIDATA/UnicodeData.txt So, if I understand you correctly, you want CHR() and ASCII() to convert between characters (in the current database encoding) and UNICODE code points (independent of database encoding). What I suggest (and what Oracle implements, and isn't CHR() and ASCII() partly for Oracle compatibility?) is that CHR() and ASCII() convert between a character (in database encoding) and that database encoding in numeric form. I think that what you suggest would be a useful function too, but I certainly wouldn't call such a function ASCII() :^) The current implementation seems closer to my idea of ASCII(), only incomplete: test=> select to_hex(ascii('EUR')); to_hex -------- e2 (1 row) What do others think? Should the argument to CHR() be a Unicode code point or the numeric representation of the database encoding? Yours, Laurenz Albe ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 7: You can help support the PostgreSQL project by donating at http://www.postgresql.org/about/donate
