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10.2 Character Sets and Collations in MySQL
===========================================
The MySQL server can support multiple character sets. To list the
available character sets, use the `SHOW CHARACTER SET' statement:
mysql> SHOW CHARACTER SET;
+----------+-----------------------------+---------------------+
| Charset | Description | Default collation |
+----------+-----------------------------+---------------------+
| big5 | Big5 Traditional Chinese | big5_chinese_ci |
| dec8 | DEC West European | dec8_swedish_ci |
| cp850 | DOS West European | cp850_general_ci |
| hp8 | HP West European | hp8_english_ci |
| koi8r | KOI8-R Relcom Russian | koi8r_general_ci |
| latin1 | ISO 8859-1 West European | latin1_swedish_ci |
| latin2 | ISO 8859-2 Central European | latin2_general_ci |
...
The output actually includes another column that is not shown so that
the example fits better on the page.
Any given character set always has at least one collation. It may have
several collations.
To list the collations for a character set, use the `SHOW COLLATION'
statement. For example, to see the collations for the `latin1'
("ISO-8859-1 West European") character set, use this statement to find
those collation names that begin with `latin1':
mysql> SHOW COLLATION LIKE 'latin1%';
+-------------------+---------+----+---------+----------+---------+
| Collation | Charset | Id | Default | Compiled | Sortlen |
+-------------------+---------+----+---------+----------+---------+
| latin1_german1_ci | latin1 | 5 | | | 0 |
| latin1_swedish_ci | latin1 | 8 | Yes | Yes | 1 |
| latin1_danish_ci | latin1 | 15 | | | 0 |
| latin1_german2_ci | latin1 | 31 | | Yes | 2 |
| latin1_bin | latin1 | 47 | | Yes | 1 |
| latin1_general_ci | latin1 | 48 | | | 0 |
| latin1_general_cs | latin1 | 49 | | | 0 |
| latin1_spanish_ci | latin1 | 94 | | | 0 |
+-------------------+---------+----+---------+----------+---------+
The `latin1' collations have the following meanings:
*Collation* *Meaning*
`latin1_bin' Binary according to `latin1' encoding
`latin1_danish_ci' Danish/Norwegian
`latin1_general_ci' Multilingual
`latin1_general_cs' Multilingual, case sensitive
`latin1_german1_ci' German DIN-1
`latin1_german2_ci' German DIN-2
`latin1_spanish_ci' Modern Spanish
`latin1_swedish_ci' Swedish/Finnish
Collations have these general characteristics:
* Two different character sets cannot have the same collation.
* Each character set has one collation that is the _default
collation_. For example, the default collation for `latin1' is
`latin1_swedish_ci'.
* There is a convention for collation names: They start with the
name of the character set with which they are associated, they
usually include a language name, and they end with `_ci' (case
insensitive), `_cs' (case sensitive), or `_bin' (binary).
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