unicode and varchar

Hi all,

I have a problem when inserting into a varchar field via jdbc.

Using to bytes makes the varchar fields shorten.

Example: with 7.4.5. on Linux

create table test(charfield varchar(5));
insert into test(charfield) values('abcde');
insert into test(charfield) values('üö');

select bit_length(charfield), length(charfield), charfield from test

bit_length length charfield
------------- --------- ------------
40 5 abcde
32 4 üö

insert into test(charfield) values('üäö');
Error: ERROR: value too long for type character varying(5)

Doing the same on Windows with the fresh 8.0 beta 2 shows a different
behaviour.

create table test(charfield varchar(5));
insert into test(charfield) values('abcde');
insert into test(charfield) values('üöüöä');

select bit_length(charfield), length(charfield), charfield from test

bit_length length charfield
------------- --------- ------------
40 5 abcde
80 5 üöüöä

'length' seems to account the 16 bit character length.

Is there a way to make this work in 7.4.x too?
May problem is that we are in a rush to do a port of our application
from informix and I will not be able to wait until 8.0 will be released.

BTW, both database servers where queried with the same JDBC driver
(version).

Best regards,

Michael