Question & Answer
Question
When I list file names, or messages in a graphical client, why do I see garbage, even though the output is correct on the host, or in the application?
Answer
The characters rendered are dependent on the client encoding.
If the data from the server is UTF-8, but the client displaying the data is ISO8859-1, you see the characters represented by the code points in the client's encoding.
For example, consider a UTF-8 character:
- LATIN_CAPITAL_LETTER_Z_WITH_ACUTE [Ź] [Hex xc5 xb9]
This character does not exist in ISO8859-1, however these code points do represent other characters:
- LATIN_CAPITAL_LETTER_A_WITH_RING_ABOVE [Å] [Hex xc5]
- SUPERSCRIPT_ONE [¹] [Hex b9]
A demonstration of the rendering differences:
1) First, generate this code point:
# perl -e 'print "\xc5\xb9"'
- In a UTF-8 client (xterm, or PuTTY, for example) we see Ź
- In an ISO8859-1 client, we see Ź
2) Now, convert to ISO8859-1 encoding, and display in the ISO8859-1 client:
# perl -e 'print "\xc5\xb9"' | iconv -f UTF-8 -t ISO8859-1
- There is no character displayed, because there is no LATIN_CAPITAL_LETTER_Z_WITH_ACUTE in the ISO8859-1 encoding.
Summary: The client environment encoding must the data encoding that is rendered to your screen.
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Modified date:
26 July 2021
UID
ibm16253207