Re: Unicode UTF-8 table formatting for psql text output

On Tue, 2009-09-29 at 12:01 -0400, Tom Lane wrote:
> Peter Eisentraut <peter_e(at)gmx(dot)net> writes:
> > On Mon, 2009-09-28 at 20:49 -0700, Brad T. Sliger wrote:
> >> pg_regress clears LC_ALL by default, but does not clear LANG
> >> by default. Please find attached a patch that
> >> causes pg_regress to also clear LANG by default.
>
> > It probably doesn't matter much, but I think the proper fix would be to
> > unset LC_CTYPE.

(Actually, I should have said, set LC_CTYPE to C.)

> Wouldn't we have to clear *all* of these variables to be sure?

Not really. The problem here is that psql checks whether the console
uses UTF8, and that is controlled by the LC_CTYPE variable on Unix-ish
systems.

> The bigger question is exactly how we expect this stuff to interact with
> pg_regress' --no-locale switch. We already do clear all these variables
> when --no-locale is specified. I am wondering just what --locale is
> supposed to do, and whether selectively lobotomizing the LC stuff has
> any real use at all.

We should do the LANG or LC_CTYPE thing only on the client,
unconditionally. The --no-locale/--locale options should primarily
determine what the temporary server uses.