Getting the encoding of a Postgres database

Question

I have a database, and I need to know the default encoding for the database. I want to get it from the command line.

Answer 1

tl;dr

SELECT character_set_name 
FROM information_schema.character_sets 
;

Standard way: information_schema

From the SQL-standard schema information_schema present in every database/catalog, use the defined view named character_sets. This approach should be portable across all standard database systems.

SELECT * 
FROM information_schema.character_sets 
;

Despite the name being plural, it shows only a single row, reporting on the current database/catalog.

The third column is character_set_name:

Name of the character set, currently implemented as showing the name of the database encoding