Re: Encoding change question... - Mailing list pgsql-general

The doublequotes isn't UTF8 it's people copying and pasting from Microsoft
stuff, which is WIN-1252. So try to use that with iconv instead of utf8

On 2010-08-16 12:40:03PM -0500, Karl Denninger wrote:
> So I have myself a nice pickle here.....
>
> I've got a database which was originally created with SQL_ASCII for the
> encoding (anything goes text fields)
>
> Unfortunately, I have a bunch of data that was encoded in UTF-8 that's
> in an RSS feed that I need to load into said database.  iconv barfs all
> over this file in an attempt to turn it into ISO-8859 (which is what the
> web application currently attached to that database is emitting and
> collecting.)  It appears the problem is (mostly) things like the
> stylized double-quotes.
>
> So I figured I'd go the other way, and convert what I have now in the
> tables into UTF8.
>
> Well, except that doesn't work either.
>
> ticker=# select convert_to(subject, 'utf8') from post where
> ordinal='2098167';
>                            convert_to
> ----------------------------------------------------------------
>  1%: the interest rate on IBM\222s most recent three-year bond.
> (1 row)
>
> \222 is the correct code point for the styled single apostrophe that is
> in that place in ISO-8859-1 in the source.  However, the UTF prefix is
> missing, as are the other two code-point characters (that is, I got the
> code point but not the other two bytes that should be in front of it.
> And if I set the code page on the web site to UTF-8, and also set the
> encoding on the SQL session to UTF-8 I don't get the three-byte code - I
> just get the one byte.  That's a bust.
>
> There are TWO fields in this database that need converted.  I presumed I
> could do something like this:
>
> # update post set field1 = convert_to(field1, 'utf8');
>
> It runs to completion without complaint but produces the above.  No good.
>
> So.... is there a way to do this?  I do NOT want to dump, iconv on the
> dumped file, then reload the database if I can possibly avoid it.  Yes,
> I know that will work (I've tested it on my development box), but being
> able to do this "hot" would be DRAMATICALLY preferred.  If I do the
> iconv route I am basically rebuilding the entire database with all
> that's involved in doing so in terms of downtime and such.  VERY
> undesirable.
>
> (Equally-valid would be a way to convert UTF-8 to ISO-8859-1 (Latin1),
> thereby allowing me to convert the incoming data stream to what's
> already in the system, but thus far I've found no joy on that at all.)
>
> Ideas?
>
> -- Karl
>

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> email;internet:karl@denninger.net
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> version:2.1
> end:vcard
>

>
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