Re: WIP patch: Collation support

Heikki Linnakangas <heikki(dot)linnakangas(at)enterprisedb(dot)com> writes:
> The first thing that we see is that the COLLATE keyword means different
> things, so it's probably best to change that into:

> CREATE DATABASE <name> WITH LC_COLLATE=<locale name> LC_CTYPE=<locale name>

> in the stripped-down version. Then we need a way to map the
> stripped-down syntax into the one in the original patch. That's just a
> matter of looking up the collation in the pg_collation catalog with the
> right LC_COLLATE and LC_CTYPE.

It seems to me that in an installation using libc-based collation
support, the collation names are likely to be the same as allowed values
of LC_COLLATE anyway. So inventing different keywords doesn't really
seem necessary.

What might be sensible to ask is whether it is ever actually reasonable
for LC_COLLATE and LC_CTYPE to have different settings. If we were
willing to enforce that they be the same, we could reduce this to just
the standard syntax COLLATE=something and be done with it. Not being
much of a user of anything except C locale, I might be the wrong person
to opine on this; but it seems to me that having them different is far
more likely to be a mistake than desirable.

regards, tom lane