3.2.4 Message Language and Encoding System Used by Applications Settings

This section explains the language settings for the application runtime environment and the encoding 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 or 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.

Encoding System Settings

Ensure that the encoding system that is embedded in the application and passed to the database, and the encoding system setting of the runtime environment, are the same. The encoding system cannot be converted correctly on the database server.

Use one of the following methods to set the encoding system for the application:

Set the PGCLIENTENCODING environment variable in the runtime environment.
Set the client_encoding keyword in the connection string.
Use the PQsetClientEncoding function.

See

Refer to "Supported Character Sets" in "Server Administration" in the PostgreSQL Documentation for information on the strings that represent the encoding system that can be set.

For example, when using "Unicode" and "8 bit", set the string "UTF8".

Example

Setting the "PGCLIENTENCODING" environment variable

An example of setting when the encoding of the client is "UTF8" (Bash)

> PGCLIENTENCODING=UTF8; export PGCLIENTENCODING

An example of setting when the encoding of the client is "UTF8"

> set PGCLIENTENCODING=UTF8

Note

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