Re: psql '\copy to' and unicode escapes - Mailing list pgsql-general

From David G. Johnston
Subject Re: psql '\copy to' and unicode escapes
Date
Msg-id CAKFQuwbpm1QO20k2X8_qRnq1up0naFSF3mbLEp+onxKSc8L+ew@mail.gmail.com
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In response to psql '\copy to' and unicode escapes  (Steven Hirsch <snhirsch@gmail.com>)
List pgsql-general
On Mon, Feb 26, 2018 at 9:53 AM, Steven Hirsch <snhirsch@gmail.com> wrote:
I fear that I'm missing something very obvious, but I cannot find a syntax that permits me to use an escaped hexadecimal representation in a CSV file and have that representation interpreted as the equivalent unicode character when inserting into the database.

​There isn't one - copy treats input as literals and performs basically no processing on them.​  The system writing the csv file would have to actually encode the UTF-8 symbol, not the string of the code point, directly into the document (i.e., a capable viewer would display whatever 00b0 is on-screen, or a placeholder if it is a non-printable character).

INSERT and COPY are two totally different animals:

INSERT INTO tbl (t) VALUES (trim('   jdjd   ')); -- stores jdjd, but putting trim('   jdjd   ') in a csv file and you would store "trim('   jdjd    ')"

David J.

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