Postgresql: set default psql client encoding When I connect to a Postgresql DB using psql, I often get these messages:

=&gt; SELECT * FROM question_view ;
ERROR:  character with byte sequence 0xd7 0x9e in encoding "UTF8" has no equivalent in encoding "LATIN1"


Following this SO answer, I understand that I should change the client encoding accordingly:

SET client_encoding = 'UTF8';


Changing the client_encoding every time I connect to the DB is cumbersome. Is there a way to permanently configure this setting, either in the .pgpass file or anywhere else?
Is there a way to permanently configure this setting, either in the .pgpass file or anywhere else


Yes there is: it's ~/.psqlrc (or %APPDATA%\postgresql\psqlrc.conf in Windows)

See the manual for details: http://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/static/app-psql.html#AEN88713