Re: C locale

On Tue, 2 Mar 2004, Ara Anjargolian wrote:

> I've been searching the list archives and the web for a while about which
> locale is best used with PostgreSQL and I did not find a satisfactory answer
> so I
> thought I would ask the list.
>
> Right now my locale is en_US, but with this you can not use standard indexes
> for LIKE
> queries, so I am left with two options:
>
> 1. User special 'operator class' indexes so that my non-C locale database
> will use indexes
> for like queries.
>
> 2.  Reinitialize my database to use the C-locale (not a big deal since I am
> still at a testing
> phase of my project)..
>
>
> I was just wondering if there is any thought as to what is the best
> approach? By switching from en_US to C locales I can avoid using special
> indexes,
> but what do I lose?  I don't really understand what the C locale is exactly,
> so I'm not sure
> if in switching from en_US to C to aviod using operator class indexes
> something else
> will stop working.

The C locale is basically an ASCII locale.  I.e. you'll lose the normal US
collation, which ignores spaces and some other things.

I find that for most of what I'm doing, the C locale is actually
preferable.