Specifies the code page that should be used by READ, INPUT, and OUTPUT statements.

Allowed values

Identifier or string

Default

Use system code page (empty string)

Scope

Can be set as a temporary option only, for the duration of the current connection.

Remarks

This option is used to specify the code page to use when reading or writing files. It cannot be set permanently. The default code page is the default code page for the platform you are running on. On English Windows computers, the default code page is 1252.

Interactive SQL determines the code page that is used for a particular INPUT, OUTPUT, or READ statement as follows, where code page values occurring earlier in the list take precedence over those occurring later in the list:

For more information about code pages and character sets, see International language and character set tasks.

See also

• READ statement [Interactive SQL]
• INPUT statement [Interactive SQL]
• OUTPUT statement [Interactive SQL]
• Overview of character sets, encodings, and collations
• SET OPTION statement [Interactive SQL]

Example

Set the encoding to UTF-16 (for reading Unicode files):

SET TEMPORARY OPTION default_isql_encoding = 'UTF-16';