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4.10.2 Locale and Formatting

DateStyle (string)

Sets the display format for date and time values, as well as the rules for interpreting ambiguous date input values. For historical reasons, this variable contains two independent components: the output format specification (ISO, Postgres, SQL, or German) and the input/output specification for year/month/day ordering (DMY, MDY, or YMD). These can be set separately or together. The keywords Euro and European are synonyms for DMY; the keywords US, NonEuro, and NonEuropean are synonyms for MDY. See Volume 1A: 6.5 Date/Time Types for more information. The built-in default is ISO, MDY, but initdb will initialize the configuration file with a setting that corresponds to the behavior of the chosen lc_time locale.

IntervalStyle (enum)

Sets the display format for interval values. The value sql_standard will produce output matching SQL standard interval literals. The value postgres (which is the default) will produce output matching PostgreSQL releases prior to 8.4 when the DateStyle parameter was set to ISO. The value postgres_verbose will produce output matching PostgreSQL releases prior to 8.4 when the DateStyle parameter was set to non-ISO output. The value iso_8601 will produce output matching the time interval “format with designators” defined in section 4.4.3.2 of ISO 8601. The IntervalStyle parameter also affects the interpretation of ambiguous interval input. See Volume 1A: 6.5.4 Interval Input for more information.

timezone (string)

Sets the time zone for displaying and interpreting time stamps. The default is unknown, which means to use whatever the system environment specifies as the time zone. See Volume 1A: 6.5.3 Time Zones for more information.

timezone_abbreviations (string)

Sets the collection of time zone abbreviations that will be accepted by the server for datetime input. The default is 'Default', which is a collection that works in most of the world; there are also 'Australia' and 'India', and other collections can be defined for a particular installation. See Volume 1A: B Date/Time Support for more information.

extra_float_digits (integer)

This parameter adjusts the number of digits displayed for floating-point values, including float4, float8, and geometric data types. The parameter value is added to the standard number of digits (FLT_DIG or DBL_DIG as appropriate). The value can be set as high as 3, to include partially-significant digits; this is especially useful for dumping float data that needs to be restored exactly. Or it can be set negative to suppress unwanted digits.

client_encoding (string)

Sets the client-side encoding (character set). The default is to use the database encoding.

lc_messages (string)

Sets the language in which messages are displayed. Acceptable values are system-dependent; see section 8.1 Locale Support for more information. If this variable is set to the empty string (which is the default) then the value is inherited from the execution environment of the server in a system-dependent way. On some systems, this locale category does not exist. Setting this variable will still work, but there will be no effect. Also, there is a chance that no translated messages for the desired language exist. In that case you will continue to see the English messages. Only superusers can change this setting, because it affects the messages sent to the server log as well as to the client, and an improper value might obscure the readability of the server logs.

lc_monetary (string)

Sets the locale to use for formatting monetary amounts, for example with the to_char family of functions. Acceptable values are system-dependent; see section 8.1 Locale Support for more information. If this variable is set to the empty string (which is the default) then the value is inherited from the execution environment of the server in a system-dependent way.

lc_numeric (string)

Sets the locale to use for formatting numbers, for example with the to_char family of functions. Acceptable values are system-dependent; see section 8.1 Locale Support for more information. If this variable is set to the empty string (which is the default) then the value is inherited from the execution environment of the server in a system-dependent way.

lc_time (string)

Sets the locale to use for formatting dates and times, for example with the to_char family of functions. Acceptable values are system-dependent; see section 8.1 Locale Support for more information. If this variable is set to the empty string (which is the default) then the value is inherited from the execution environment of the server in a system-dependent way.

default_text_search_config (string)

Selects the text search configuration that is used by those variants of the text search functions that do not have an explicit argument specifying the configuration. See Volume 1A: 10 Full Text Search for further information. The built-in default is pg_catalog.simple, but initdb will initialize the configuration file with a setting that corresponds to the chosen lc_ctype locale, if a configuration matching that locale can be identified.