SQL: Character sets

SQL support multiple character sets. For example, to represent English alphabet, one byte is enough, but to represent a Chinese (or) Japanese character 2 or more bytes are required.

 

You can get all the supported character sets and their lengths by executing the command 'show character set;'

 

mysql> show character set;
+----------+---------------------------------+---------------------+--------+
| Charset  | Description                     | Default collation   | Maxlen |
+----------+---------------------------------+---------------------+--------+
| armscii8 | ARMSCII-8 Armenian              | armscii8_general_ci |      1 |
| ascii    | US ASCII                        | ascii_general_ci    |      1 |
| big5     | Big5 Traditional Chinese        | big5_chinese_ci     |      2 |
| binary   | Binary pseudo charset           | binary              |      1 |
| cp1250   | Windows Central European        | cp1250_general_ci   |      1 |
| cp1251   | Windows Cyrillic                | cp1251_general_ci   |      1 |
| cp1256   | Windows Arabic                  | cp1256_general_ci   |      1 |
| cp1257   | Windows Baltic                  | cp1257_general_ci   |      1 |
| cp850    | DOS West European               | cp850_general_ci    |      1 |
| cp852    | DOS Central European            | cp852_general_ci    |      1 |
| cp866    | DOS Russian                     | cp866_general_ci    |      1 |
| cp932    | SJIS for Windows Japanese       | cp932_japanese_ci   |      2 |
| dec8     | DEC West European               | dec8_swedish_ci     |      1 |
| eucjpms  | UJIS for Windows Japanese       | eucjpms_japanese_ci |      3 |
| euckr    | EUC-KR Korean                   | euckr_korean_ci     |      2 |
| gb18030  | China National Standard GB18030 | gb18030_chinese_ci  |      4 |
| gb2312   | GB2312 Simplified Chinese       | gb2312_chinese_ci   |      2 |
| gbk      | GBK Simplified Chinese          | gbk_chinese_ci      |      2 |
| geostd8  | GEOSTD8 Georgian                | geostd8_general_ci  |      1 |
| greek    | ISO 8859-7 Greek                | greek_general_ci    |      1 |
| hebrew   | ISO 8859-8 Hebrew               | hebrew_general_ci   |      1 |
| hp8      | HP West European                | hp8_english_ci      |      1 |
| keybcs2  | DOS Kamenicky Czech-Slovak      | keybcs2_general_ci  |      1 |
| koi8r    | KOI8-R Relcom Russian           | koi8r_general_ci    |      1 |
| koi8u    | KOI8-U Ukrainian                | koi8u_general_ci    |      1 |
| latin1   | cp1252 West European            | latin1_swedish_ci   |      1 |
| latin2   | ISO 8859-2 Central European     | latin2_general_ci   |      1 |
| latin5   | ISO 8859-9 Turkish              | latin5_turkish_ci   |      1 |
| latin7   | ISO 8859-13 Baltic              | latin7_general_ci   |      1 |
| macce    | Mac Central European            | macce_general_ci    |      1 |
| macroman | Mac West European               | macroman_general_ci |      1 |
| sjis     | Shift-JIS Japanese              | sjis_japanese_ci    |      2 |
| swe7     | 7bit Swedish                    | swe7_swedish_ci     |      1 |
| tis620   | TIS620 Thai                     | tis620_thai_ci      |      1 |
| ucs2     | UCS-2 Unicode                   | ucs2_general_ci     |      2 |
| ujis     | EUC-JP Japanese                 | ujis_japanese_ci    |      3 |
| utf16    | UTF-16 Unicode                  | utf16_general_ci    |      4 |
| utf16le  | UTF-16LE Unicode                | utf16le_general_ci  |      4 |
| utf32    | UTF-32 Unicode                  | utf32_general_ci    |      4 |
| utf8     | UTF-8 Unicode                   | utf8_general_ci     |      3 |
| utf8mb4  | UTF-8 Unicode                   | utf8mb4_0900_ai_ci  |      4 |
+----------+---------------------------------+---------------------+--------+
41 rows in set (0.00 sec)

 Maxlen column specifies the number of bytes required to store a character in this character set.

 

Can I use different character sets for each column in a table?

Yes

 

Can I set default character set for my database?

Yes

 

create database japanese_orders character set cp932;

 

Above command set cp932 as default character set for the database ‘japanese_orders’.

 

Apply Where clause on ‘show character set’

Get all the character sets whose maximum length is 4 bytes.

SHOW CHARACTER SET WHERE Maxlen=4;

mysql> SHOW CHARACTER SET WHERE Maxlen=4;
+---------+---------------------------------+--------------------+--------+
| Charset | Description                     | Default collation  | Maxlen |
+---------+---------------------------------+--------------------+--------+
| gb18030 | China National Standard GB18030 | gb18030_chinese_ci |      4 |
| utf16   | UTF-16 Unicode                  | utf16_general_ci   |      4 |
| utf16le | UTF-16LE Unicode                | utf16le_general_ci |      4 |
| utf32   | UTF-32 Unicode                  | utf32_general_ci   |      4 |
| utf8mb4 | UTF-8 Unicode                   | utf8mb4_0900_ai_ci |      4 |
+---------+---------------------------------+--------------------+--------+
5 rows in set (0.00 sec) 

 

Apply LIKE clause to show character set command

mysql> SHOW CHARACTER SET LIKE 'UTF%';
+---------+------------------+--------------------+--------+
| Charset | Description      | Default collation  | Maxlen |
+---------+------------------+--------------------+--------+
| utf16   | UTF-16 Unicode   | utf16_general_ci   |      4 |
| utf16le | UTF-16LE Unicode | utf16le_general_ci |      4 |
| utf32   | UTF-32 Unicode   | utf32_general_ci   |      4 |
| utf8    | UTF-8 Unicode    | utf8_general_ci    |      3 |
| utf8mb4 | UTF-8 Unicode    | utf8mb4_0900_ai_ci |      4 |
+---------+------------------+--------------------+--------+
5 rows in set (0.00 sec)

 

 

 

 

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