Re: COPY command character set

"Peter Headland" <pheadland(at)actuate(dot)com> writes:
>> set client_encoding = 'utf8';
>> copy from stdin/to stdout;

> What if I want to do this on the server side (because it's much, much
> faster)? Does COPY use the default encoding of the database? If not,
> what?

> If this is a restrictive as it appears, and there are no outstanding
> enhancements planned in this area, I might be interested in improving
> this command to allow specifying the encoding and to have it do obvious
> stuff like recognize UTF lead bytes automatically. At the very least,
> the documentation needs some work to explain these subtleties.

The COPY command reference page saith

Input data is interpreted according to the current client encoding,
and output data is encoded in the the current client encoding, even
if the data does not pass through the client but is read from or
written to a file.

Seems clear enough to me.

regards, tom lane