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From: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
To: Laurenz Albe <laurenz.albe@cybertec.at>
cc: bugs-postgresql@antipoul.fr, pgsql-docs@lists.postgresql.org
Subject: Re: Mention invalid null byte sequence
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 <0f0470f6d8c543793d2b71913cb230daea1aef3a.camel@cybertec.at>
Comments: In-reply-to Laurenz Albe <laurenz.albe@cybertec.at>
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Laurenz Albe <laurenz.albe@cybertec.at> writes:
> On Sat, 2020-12-05 at 21:58 +0000, PG Doc comments form wrote:
>> The following documentation comment has been logged on the website:
>> Page: https://www.postgresql.org/docs/13/datatype-character.html
>> Description:
>> 
>> So it should written in the character type that null byte are not accepted,
>> it would make like easier to migrate to PostgreSQL :)

> +1; how about the attached patch?

I had thought that this was already documented, but after digging around
I can only find it mentioned in the contexts of saying that literal
strings and quoted identifiers can't contain \0.  So yeah, we need to
improve that.

I agree with the submitter that the place one would expect to read about
this is in datatype-character.html.  So I'd propose the attached.
Maybe there's reason to repeat the info in charset.sgml, but it seems
like more of a datatype limitation than a character set issue.

			regards, tom lane


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diff --git a/doc/src/sgml/datatype.sgml b/doc/src/sgml/datatype.sgml
index 5c8a92e250..9eb19a1c61 100644
--- a/doc/src/sgml/datatype.sgml
+++ b/doc/src/sgml/datatype.sgml
@@ -1209,6 +1209,14 @@ SELECT '52093.89'::money::numeric::float8;
     regular expressions.
    </para>
 
+   <para>
+    The characters that can be stored in any of these data types are
+    determined by the database character set, which is selected when
+    the database is created.  Regardless of the specific character set,
+    the character with code zero (sometimes called NUL) cannot be stored.
+    For more information refer to <xref linkend="multibyte"/>.
+   </para>
+
    <para>
     The storage requirement for a short string (up to 126 bytes) is 1 byte
     plus the actual string, which includes the space padding in the case of
@@ -1246,10 +1254,7 @@ SELECT '52093.89'::money::numeric::float8;
    <para>
     Refer to <xref linkend="sql-syntax-strings"/> for information about
     the syntax of string literals, and to <xref linkend="functions"/>
-    for information about available operators and functions. The
-    database character set determines the character set used to store
-    textual values; for more information on character set support,
-    refer to <xref linkend="multibyte"/>.
+    for information about available operators and functions.
    </para>
 
    <example>

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