I wrote:
> Hmm ... I can reproduce the problem on Fedora 11. Given a UTF8-encoded
> database (I don't think locale matters), 8.3.7 works as described, but
> 8.3.8 fails as described, as do 8.4.1 and HEAD. Given that the only
> difference in plperl.c between 8.3.7 and 8.3.8 is the addition of the
> PERL_SYS_INIT3 call, I have to suppose that that's screwing up
> Text::Iconv somehow.
Huh ... belay that. Diking out the PERL_SYS_INIT3 call doesn't make
the problem go away.
What I was actually comparing was the current Fedora 11 8.3.7 RPMs
with 8.3.8 built from source. 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 ...
(Whether this has anything to do with the OP's problem on Debian
remains to be determined, but it's definitely busted on Fedora.)
regards, tom lane