[plt-dev] pgsql package

Robby wrote:
> Hi all (Ryan?): I've got a question about pgsql. From what I can tell,
> string data is stored in the database in the latin-1 encoding
> (sql-data.ss line 191), but is then retrieved from the database in the
> utf-8 encoding (io.ss line 205). Am I getting that right?
>
> This doesn't mean much, but I changed planet's copy of io.ss to use
> bytes->string/latin-1 instead of bytes->string/utf-8, and I was able
> to avoid crashing (but the latin-1 encoding might not have any
> unencodable octets, so that isn't really saying too too much).

PostgreSQL lets you specify character encodings on a per-database and  
per-client basis. The shell command:

   psql -l

will show you your setting for each database on your server. The psql  
command:

    \encoding

will show you your client encoding for your current session. You can  
set your client encoding using the psql command:

     \encoding UTF8

I'm guessing backslash commands can also be sent over an SPGSQL  
connection... you could try doing:

     (send conn exec "\\encoding UTF8")

as soon as you connect. If that works, perhaps it's something that  
could be rolled into SPGSQL's "connect" procedure?

Hope this helps,

-- Dave