Thread

[PATCH 1/1] Doc: \123 and \x12 escapes in COPY are in database encoding.

Heikki Linnakangas <heikki.linnakangas@iki.fi> — 2021-08-12T07:39:16Z

The backslash sequences, including \123 and \x12 escapes, are interpreted
after encoding conversion. The docs failed to mention that.

Reported-by: Andreas Grob
Discussion: https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/17142-9181542ca1df75ab%40postgresql.org
---
 doc/src/sgml/ref/copy.sgml | 10 ++++++++--
 1 file changed, 8 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)

diff --git a/doc/src/sgml/ref/copy.sgml b/doc/src/sgml/ref/copy.sgml
index 14cd437da0..8f5e401284 100644
--- a/doc/src/sgml/ref/copy.sgml
+++ b/doc/src/sgml/ref/copy.sgml
@@ -636,12 +636,12 @@ COPY <replaceable class="parameter">count</replaceable>
       <row>
        <entry><literal>\</literal><replaceable>digits</replaceable></entry>
        <entry>Backslash followed by one to three octal digits specifies
-       the character with that numeric code</entry>
+       the byte with that numeric code</entry>
       </row>
       <row>
        <entry><literal>\x</literal><replaceable>digits</replaceable></entry>
        <entry>Backslash <literal>x</literal> followed by one or two hex digits specifies
-       the character with that numeric code</entry>
+       the byte with that numeric code</entry>
       </row>
      </tbody>
     </tgroup>
@@ -673,6 +673,12 @@ COPY <replaceable class="parameter">count</replaceable>
     or vice versa).
    </para>
 
+   <para>
+     All backslash sequences are interpreted after encoding conversion. The bytes
+     specified with the octal and hex-digit backslash sequences must form
+     valid characters in the database encoding.
+   </para>
+
    <para>
     <command>COPY TO</command> will terminate each row with a Unix-style
     newline (<quote><literal>\n</literal></quote>).  Servers running on Microsoft Windows instead
-- 
2.30.2


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