Re: BUG #5010: perl iconv function returns ? character

Devrim GÜNDÜZ <devrim@gunduz.org> writes:
> On Sun, 2009-09-06 at 12:52 -0400, Tom Lane wrote:
>> I would have said that the RPMs are
>> not built in any way significantly different from a straight
>> configure-and-build-from-source, but it appears that something in
>> the RPM build options makes this work.  Investigating ...

> Could it be because of perl-Text-Iconv package?

Well, you have to install that before you can test the problem at all,
but the working and non-working cases are using the same Text::IConv
code.  I think I just figured it out though.  I had dismissed locale as
not being the critical difference, but that was foolish (and I paid for
it with an hour of wasted effort).  My RPM installation is working
because it defaults to en_US locale, and my source installation is not
working because it uses C locale.  If I switch to either en_US or cz_CZ
locale then Text::IConv gives the expected result.

I now believe that the OP's actual problem is related to this:
http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-committers/2009-07/msg00098.php
He's probably ending up in C locale internally.  If so it'll be fixed
in 8.4.1.

The only observation not accounted for is Robert's statement that he
couldn't reproduce it in 8.4.0 --- but I think the behavior with the bug
is dependent on the postmaster's starting environment, so it would be
easy to fail to duplicate someone else's result.
        regards, tom lane