# \[Repost, with Formatting\] Trying to understand unicode character entry, goes into postgres DB backi

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/repost-with-formatting-trying-to-understand-unicode-character-entry-goes-into-postgres-db-backi/125127>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [January 5, 2008, 9:19pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/repost-with-formatting-trying-to-understand-unicode-character-entry-goes-into-postgres-db-backi/125127 "2008-01-05T21:19:41Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Steven\_GSHarms](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/2bfe46/32.png) [@Steven\_GSHarms](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Steven_GSHarms)\
**Post date:** [January 5, 2008, 9:19pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/repost-with-formatting-trying-to-understand-unicode-character-entry-goes-into-postgres-db-backi/125127/1 "2008-01-05T21:19:41Z")

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Apologies on unformatted send previously, i hit Enter and the web UI  
posted, to my chagrin.

1. Examine the Unicode standard’s code page collection for “Latin  
small letter a with macron”.

2. Nets U0100.pdf

3. “Latin small letter a with macron” appears on chart as 0101. This  
is a hexidemial number which points to U+0101 as its code point.  
Converting 0101 to decimal gets you 257, this is the same as the HTML  
entity code.  
HTML code point is 257. That is &257; gives you &257; != 325. OK, so I  
can link this guy back to the Unicode source. But here’s the question,  
what’s up with the two broken values.

4. Put &257; character into a view via Rails that is back-ended by a  
PostGres database.

5. Using script/console, write the collection of models that contain  
this accented character to a YAML file.

6. “Latin small letter a with macron” is stored in a YAML dump of  
accented charcters as: \xC4\x81  
Hm, OK that’s a start. Somehow 0101 or 257 is linked to C4 81 Let’s  
convert those two to decimal and see if correlation becomes clear ( I  
know, BTW, the database that holds that entry is in UTF-8).  
C4: 196  
81: 129  
196+129=325 != 0101. Hm, look at documentation.

7. Be stumped.

* * *

I’m working an application up that works with foreign languages and  
I’m trying to make it easy to enter accented characters. I saved some  
base data that I entered as a fixture ( so that I could re-load it as  
a sample when needed ) and I noticed that in this yaml file my  
accented characters are in this unusual \x##\x## format that bears  
little link to the code-points that I’ve seen before in code point  
charts.

I’ve always been scared to jump into the “How does Unicode work,  
really” discussion, but maybe it’s time that I try to sort it out a  
bit.

Doubtless people from a more multi-lingual environment probably  
understand this much better than those of us in North America, so I’m  
hoping this is a lost easier than I think!