Hi,
I have a UTF8 database and simple table with two columns (integer and varchar). Created a csv file with some multibyte characters and trying to perform load operation using the copy command.
Database info:
Postgresql database details:
Name | Owner | Encoding | Collate | Ctype | Access privileges
-----------+----------+----------+--------------------+--------------------+-----------------------
postgres | postgres | UTF8 | English_India.1252 | English_India.1252 |
(Note: I also tried with collate utf8 and no luck)
postgres=# set client_encoding='UTF8';
SET
Table:
create table public.test ( PKCOL integer not null, STR1 character varying(64) null, primary key( PKCOL ))
csv contents:
1|"àáâãäåæçèéêëìíîï"
After data loading, actual data is becoming
à áâãäåæçèéêëìÃîï
hex of this is - c2a1c2a2c2a3c2a4c2a5c2a6c2a7c2a8c2a9c2aac2abc2acc2aec2af
The hex values are indeed the UTF-8 encodings of the characters in your expected string, and the presence of `C2` before each character is indicative of how UTF-8 represents certain characters.
In UTF-8, characters from the extended Latin set (like `à`, `á`, `â`, etc.) are represented as two bytes. The first byte `C2` or `C3` indicates that this is a two-byte character, and the second byte specifies the character. For example:
- `à` is represented as `C3 A0`
- `á` is `C3 A1`
- `â` is `C3 A2`, and so on.
In this case, the `C2` byte is getting interpreted as a separate character and that is the likely reason that an `Â` (which corresponds to `C2`) is seen before each intended character. Looks like UTF-8 encoded data is mistakenly interpreted as Latin-1 (ISO-8859-1) or Windows-1252, where each byte is treated as a separate character.
Please advise. Thank you very much.
Regards,
Kiran