initdb stores default client_encoding from environment-variable

initdb stores default client_encoding from environment-variable


Postgres Version: 8.4.3 and 8.3.6
Operating System: Sun Solaris 5.10 and SuseEnterprise 9

When a database is initialized with the initdb-command, the default
client_enconding, which will be stored in the DB, depends on the value
of the environment-variable PGCLIENTENCODING at the time of running
initdb. This behaviour is not documented.
Furthermore I didn't find a command to change this
default client_encoding in the database later.
The default client_encoding does not depend on the database encoding!

This is a small shell-script to show this behaviour.

#!/bin/bash -x
#
PGHOST=3D"localhost"
PGPORT=3D7654
PGDATABASE=3Dpostgres
PGUSER=3Dpostgres
export PGHOST PGPORT PGDATABASE PGUSER
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=3D/usr/local/pgsql/lib

binpath=3D/usr/local/pgsql/bin
dir=3D/data/DB-2

$binpath/pg_ctl stop -D $dir/pg-base -m fast -o '-p 7654'
#
#  remove Database
#
rm -r $dir/pg-base       2> /dev/null
sleep 1
mkdir $dir/pg-base       2> /dev/null

PGCLIENTENCODING=3D"WIN1250"
export PGCLIENTENCODING

$binpath/initdb --encoding=3DUTF8 -D $dir/pg-base

$binpath/pg_ctl start -D $dir/pg-base -l $dir/pg-server.log -o '-p 7654'

sleep 5

unset PGCLIENTENCODING  #  IMPORTANT !!

$binpath/psql -c "select version();"
$binpath/psql -c "show client_encoding;"