22021

At a glance

A source byte sequence is invalid for the encoding being checked. The fixed conversion path reports invalid byte sequence for encoding "%s": %s and formats the offending bytes.

Meaning

report_invalid_encoding computes the incomplete or invalid multibyte length and emits 22021 with the source encoding name and hexadecimal bytes. A valid source character that has no equivalent in the destination encoding follows the separate 22P05 untranslatable-character path; that is not evidence that the source bytes themselves are malformed.

Diagnosis

Record source and destination encodings, client/database settings, and the exact bytes before changing anything. Invalid source bytes point to input or boundary decoding; a readable but unrepresentable character points to conversion repertoire. Do not treat SQL_ASCII as a universal fix: accepting arbitrary bytes can defer or hide an encoding boundary defect.

Response

Repair the producer or encoding boundary, or explicitly convert the value with a deliberate loss/rejection policy while retaining the offending bytes for diagnosis. If the ERROR occurred in an explicit transaction, roll back or roll back to the existing savepoint before retrying; autocommit can retry corrected input.

Versions

The locked catalogue records this condition from 7.4; the fixed conversion paths here are PostgreSQL 18.6. No natural runtime observation is claimed for this page.

Related

22P05, 22018

Sources

The invalid-byte reporter is src/backend/utils/mb/mbutils.c#L1818-1853; the same fixed file’s report_untranslatable_char path emits the distinct 22P05 condition for a valid but non-representable character. The structured evidence record retains both boundaries; no natural runtime was run.