PostgreSQL: varchar(1) and Umlaut

Question

I have a VARCHAR(1) field in postgresql. Now I export data from a postgresql 9.4 server with pg_dump and import it to a postgresql 9.5 server with pgsql.

When I import it, I get an error:

ERROR: value too long for type character varying(1) COPY XXX "Ö"

That means in the table there is the value "Ö" which takes 2 bytes instead of 1 byte.

• Must I increase the column to VARCHAR(2)?

• Is there another way to keep VARCHAR(1) and use a locale etc.?

• Why could this data ever be stored there?

Thanks for your help!

Answer 1

Easy fix:

The encoding of the target database was wrong and had to be set to UTF8.