5.2.2 Message Language and Character Set Settings

This section explains the language settings for the application runtime environment and the character set settings for the application.

Language settings

You must match the language settings for the application runtime environment with the message locale settings of the database server.

Linux
The language settings are made with the LANG environment variable and with the setlocale function in the source code.
- LANG environment variable settings
  Apart from LANG, other environment variables for specifying language are LC_ALL and LC_MESSAGES. When multiple of these environment variables are set, the order of priority will be 1. LC_ALL, 2. LC_MESSAGES, and 3. LANG.
  Example
  Example of specifying "en_US.UTF-8" with the LANG environment variable (Bash)
  > LANG=en_US.UTF-8; export LANG
- Settings for setlocale
  Set the language of the application using the setlocale function in the source code.
  Example
  Example of specifying "en_US.UTF-8" with the setlocale function
  setlocale(LC_ALL,"en_US.UTF-8");
  Information
  Refer to the documentation for the operating system for information on using the setlocale function.

Windows
Follows the locale of the OS.

Character set settings

It is recommended to match the character set setting of the application with the character set setting of the client. Messages may be garbled if the settings do not match.

Use one of the following procedures to set the character set for the application:

Setting in the "PGCLIENTENCODING" environment variable
Specifying the client_encoding parameter with the SET command

Also match the character code with the environment.

Setting in the "PGCLIENTENCODING" environment variable

Example

An example of specifying when the character set of the client is UTF-8 (Bash)

> PGCLIENTENCODING=UTF8; export PGCLIENTENCODING

An example of specifying when the character set of the client is UTF-8

> set PGCLIENTENCODING=UTF8

Specifying the client_encoding parameter with the SET statement

Example

An example of specifying when the character set of the client is UTF-8

> SET client_encoding TO 'UTF8';

Note

Text may be garbled when outputting results to the command prompt. Review the font settings for the command prompt if this occurs.

See

Refer to "Character Set Support" in "Server Administration" in the PostgreSQL Documentation for information on the character sets that can be used.