Re: Japanese words not distinguished

> Hello
>
> I run PostgreSQL 7.4.6 on Linux with a JDBC client.
>
> I initialised my database cluster with the following initdb command:
>
> initdb --locale=en_GB.UTF-8 --encoding UNICODE
>
> I have now discovered that my database cannot distinguish Japanese names or
> words - it throws unique constraint errors on a composite primary key that
> includes a VARCHAR field which stores the names or words.
>
> My tests indicate that the database treats all Japanese names/words as
> equal.

That's a famous problem among Japaneses PostgreSQL users since the
locale support was born.

> Having searched the forum archives, it seems to me that I should have
> specified "--locale=C" as the locale setting when I initialised my database
> cluster.
>
> I am planning to re-initialise my database cluster using the following
> command:
>
> initdb --locale=C --encoding UNICODE
>
> Then, after defining the relevant groups and users, I intend to call
> pg_restore with reference to a "tar.gz" dump file of my data.
>
> I wonder if someone might be kind enough to confirm that this is the right
> approach to solving the problem.

Correct. The lesson is, never use locale support for Asian languages
and multibyte encodings including UTF-8.
--
Tatsuo Ishii