Tom Lane wrote:
> Reflecting on the bigger picture ... I would imagine that the vast
> majority of existing applications depend on client_encoding settings
> that come from postgresql.conf, ALTER USER SET, ALTER DATABASE SET, or
> just the default (== database encoding). I don't think a solution that
> penalizes those cases and makes only the case of setting it via
> PGCLIENTENCODING work nicely is going to make very many people happy.
I don't have any survey data available, but I think this assessment is
semantically wrong. Usefully, the client encoding can come only from
the client, or be defaulted (and even that is semantically wrong). I
see the other cases as workarounds.