Thread: BUG #5845: Postgres does not seem to handle unquoted upper cased object identifiers

The following bug has been logged online:

Bug reference:      5845
Logged by:          Kasia Tuszynska
Email address:      ktuszynska@esri.com
PostgreSQL version: 9.0.2
Operating system:   Windows 2008 R2 (64bit)
Description:        Postgres does not seem to handle unquoted upper cased
object identifiers
Details:

This issue was reported by a customer in Spain, the original examples with
table and column names specific to the Spanish language.

Basic issue:
In the documentation Postgres states that it's identifiers (table, column
names etc)are case insensitive and thus it stores everything in lower case.
To preserve case of a identifier, the name needs to be quoted.

So, in the example:
create table TESTá007 (objectid integer);
create table testá007 (objectid integer);
- the second statement should fail with a table exists error.

But it's handing of incoming upper cased identifiers seems to be
inconsistent.
We have observed the following:
create table á007 (objectid integer);
select * from á007;Found
select * from Á007;Not Found

create table Á008 (objectid integer);
select * from Á008;Found
select * from á008;Not Found

This inability to ignore the case causes problems when trying to delete the
table.

It seems that the upper and lower functions are not working as expected:
select upper('ñ006'),lower('Ñ005');
"ñ006";"Ñ005"

Environments Tested:
Version 8.3.8 (codepage win1252 and Spain locale):
--all query return records correctly with upper and lower case.
Version 9.0.0:
--error trying to delete table á008
Version 9.0.2(codepage win1252 and Spanish locale)
--error trying to delete table á008

Excerpts from Kasia Tuszynska's message of lun ene 24 16:48:21 -0300 2011:

> Basic issue:
> In the documentation Postgres states that it's identifiers (table, column
> names etc)are case insensitive and thus it stores everything in lower case.
> To preserve case of a identifier, the name needs to be quoted.


> But it's handing of incoming upper cased identifiers seems to be
> inconsistent.
> We have observed the following:
> create table á007 (objectid integer);
> select * from á007;Found
> select * from Á007;Not Found

Yes, this is a known limitation, but previous discussions about it
haven't led to finding a solution to the problem.

--
Álvaro Herrera <alvherre@commandprompt.com>
The PostgreSQL Company - Command Prompt, Inc.
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