CODEWITHSUNDEEP
postgresqlutf-8character-encoding
Johann Gottfried
Johann Gottfried

Reputation: 311

How to get the code point and utf8 encoding for any character in PostgeSQL

Are there any PostgreSQL functions other than ascii() to show the code points and utf8 encodings for characters?

ascii() (as the name suggests?) is limited, as the following example shows:

the character ą, an a with the diacritic ̨, is actually a combination of two characters rendered as one:

ascii() is not suitable for this kind of character (combination):

select ascii('ą');
ascii 
-------
97

97 is the code point of the character a, so the full code point of ą is not shown.

How can I get the code point and utf8 encoding for any character in PostgreSQL, i.e. also for combined ones?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 569

Answers (1)

Laurenz Albe
Laurenz Albe

Reputation: 247260

The trouble is that that is not a single character, but the combination of two characters, an a and a “combining character”. While these are rendered as a single character, they are not.

If you used the single character ą (UNICODE code point 261), you wouldn't have that problem.

You would need software that translates character combinations into single characters (where possible), but PostgreSQL has no such function as far as I know.

Upvotes: 1

Related Questions