Re: [HACKERS] proposal: UTF8 to_ascii function

Pavel Stehule wrote:
> Hello,
>
> combination functions to_ascii and convert_to is broken now. Problem
> is in convert_to function. It doesn't support 8bit output encoding.
>
> Current workaround:
>
> CREATE FUNCTION to_ascii(bytea, name)
> RETURNS text AS 'to_ascii_encname' LANGUAGE internal;
>
> SELECT to_ascii(convert_to('Příliš žlutý kůň', 'latin2'),'latin2');
>
> I don't expect column collate for 8.4, so we need to have workable
> to_ascii function.
>
> I propose function to_ascii(text, name) that internally convert text
> from utf8 encoding when it's necessary.cheers
>
>
>

convert_to is not broken. It returns a bytea, and it is up to you to
de-escape it if you get the text representation.

We are surely not going to go back to a situation where we have
functions returning text in any encoding other than the database
encoding. That becomes a vehicle for storing wrongly encoded data in the
database, and we have just gone through the exercise of plugging those
holes. I privately predicted when we did this work that it might
motivate people who had been abusing convert_to to get proper support
for multiple encodings done. That is the right way to go, not re-opening
holes we have just very deliberately plugged.

cheers

andrew

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