FreeTDS Development Group

[Daniel Fazekas <fdsubs AT axelero.hu>]

On Nov 13, 2003, at 15:27, Michael G. Vonk wrote:

> Thanks, that worked to get FreeTDS to compile.
> I then installed the DBD::Sybase Perl module and now I get the
> following error:
> % ./test.pl
> dyld: perl Undefined symbols:
> _libiconv_open
> Trace/BPT trap
> %
> Any idea on why I am getting this error?  This script worked under Mac 
> OS X 10.2.

As far as I know, the iconv stuff in freetds is new for 0.62, which is 
why it's only appearing now.

I use FreeTDS with PHP and not Perl, but I did have a similar problem: 
I had to make sure PHP is also bound to iconv (and not just via a 
shared extension). Hardly an elegant solution, but it works and I 
welcome the support for iconv in freetds. I don't know if there's any 
way to make the Perl executable bound to libiconv as well or if there 
is a better solution... There's got to be one.

You can disable libiconv usage in freetds if you recompile it adding 
the --disable-libiconv switch to the ./configure script.

The iconv stuff gives you proper support for translating between 
different character encodings. It's most useful when using TDS version 
8.0 with MS SQL Server, which as I understand uses some flavor of 
Unicode for everything. FreeTDS can - with the help of iconv -, 
transparently translate that back to a single-byte character encoding 
for you. Previous FreeTDS versions didn't do a proper translation and 
just stripped the Unicode characters down to a single byte, or 
something to that effect, which was also good enough for most of us, 
including myself.

--
Daniel