Questions about pg_enable_utf8

A question about DBD::Pg and client encoding came up on the Rose::DB
list and now I'm a bit more curious about how DBD::Pg handles
different client encodings.  Feel free to point me to any archive if
this is an old topic.

I assume the "pg_enable_utf8" feature was added in 1.22:

    1.22 Wed Mar 26 22:33:44 EST 2003 (subversion r6993)
        - Add utf8 support [Dominic Mitchell <[email protected]>]


I use the pg_enable_utf8 option -- my database is in utf8 (and thus my
client encoding defaults to utf8).  All seems to work well.  In my
applications I also decode all input data from other sources (e.g.
templates), and call encode() for all output (except data going to the
database).

From my *limited* knowledge of DBD::Pg it seems the pg_enable_utf8
option simply forces the utf8 flag on data read from the database
*IF* that data looks like a valid utf8 string.  Does that happen on
all column data, or only columns that are text?

Are there any other actions by DBD::Pg for supporting character
encodings?

I didn't see that DBD::Pg does any encoding of data, yet I do not see
any "Wide Character in %s" errors when writing to the db, so I assume
DBD::Pg is sending data to the db in a way that avoids that message.


I'm curious about forcing the utf8 flag because binary data might look
like a valid utf8 string but not be (not that setting the utf8 flag
will do any damage to non-text data, that I'm aware of).


I think the "proper" approach would be to decode using the
client_encoding on read from the db on text columns and likewise
encode to the client encoding on write back to the db.  But, perhaps
there is a reason that approach was not taken.

Can anyone fill me in on the state of character support in DBD::Pg?


Thanks,



-- 
Bill Moseley
[email protected]
Sent from my iMutt