Re: Oracle 8i - Pound Symbols (£) stored as hashes (#)

From: Sam Jones <sam.j.jones_at_spamnull.logicacmg.com>
Date: Tue, 2 Aug 2005 14:04:00 +0100
Message-ID: <1122987841.172569@ernani.logica.co.uk>

><sybrandb_at_yahoo.com> wrote in message
>news:1122981038.876114.57320_at_o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com...
>NLS_TERRITORY only comes into play when you specifically request Oracle
>to use currency symbols in to_char functions.
>So as far can be seen now this must be a database characterset problem,
>the £
>falling back to a #
>What is the characterset of the database?

Sybrand,

Thanks for the reply. I just spoke with a local DBA and it seems the database has been installed with all the American values as defaults. I'm now certain it's the characterset that's causing this, as it's impossible to get the database to return a pound symbol at all, even with a simple select from dual:

SQL> select decode ('#','#','£','!') from dual;

D
-
#

I've tested this on a separate database configured with a British charset, and it correctly returns the pound symbol.

So it looks like the user is stuffed unless the business owners of the system are willing to perform a charset migration.

Again, thanks for your assistance.

Sam Jones Received on Tue Aug 02 2005 - 08:04:00 CDT