MySQL - SHOW CHARACTER SET Statement

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MySQL SHOW CHARACTER SET Statement

Character set of MySQL is the set of legal characters that are allowed in a string. MySQL provides several character-sets you can see the list of all the available character sets using the SHOW CHARACTER SET statement.

Syntax

Following is the syntax of the ALTER DATABASE statement −

SHOW CHARACTER SET
   [LIKE 'pattern' | WHERE expr]

Example

Following query retrieves all the available character sets −

SHOW CHARACTER SET\G;

Output

The above query produces the output shown below −

*********** 1. row ***********
          Charset: armscii8
      Description: ARMSCII-8 Armenian
Default collation: armscii8_general_ci
           Maxlen: 1
*********** 2. row ***********
          Charset: ascii
      Description: US ASCII
Default collation: ascii_general_ci
           Maxlen: 1
*********** 3. row ***********
          Charset: big5
      Description: Big5 Traditional Chinese
Default collation: big5_chinese_ci
           Maxlen: 2
*********** 4. row ***********
          Charset: binary
      Description: Binary pseudo charset
Default collation: binary
           Maxlen: 1
*********** 5. row ***********
          Charset: cp1250
      Description: Windows Central European
Default collation: cp1250_general_ci
           Maxlen: 1
*********** 6. row ***********
          Charset: cp1251
      Description: Windows Cyrillic
Default collation: cp1251_general_ci
           Maxlen: 1
*********** 7. row ***********
          Charset: cp1256
      Description: Windows Arabic
Default collation: cp1256_general_ci
           Maxlen: 1
*********** 8. row ***********
          Charset: cp1257
      Description: Windows Baltic
Default collation: cp1257_general_ci
           Maxlen: 1
*********** 9. row ***********
          Charset: cp850
      Description: DOS West European
Default collation: cp850_general_ci
           Maxlen: 1
*********** 10. row ***********
          Charset: cp852
      Description: DOS Central European
Default collation: cp852_general_ci
           Maxlen: 1
*********** 11. row ***********
          Charset: cp866
      Description: DOS Russian
Default collation: cp866_general_ci
           Maxlen: 1
*********** 12. row ***********
          Charset: cp932
      Description: SJIS for Windows Japanese
Default collation: cp932_japanese_ci
           Maxlen: 2
*********** 13. row ***********
          Charset: dec8
      Description: DEC West European
Default collation: dec8_swedish_ci
           Maxlen: 1
*********** 14. row ***********
          Charset: eucjpms
      Description: UJIS for Windows Japanese
Default collation: eucjpms_japanese_ci
           Maxlen: 3
*********** 15. row ***********
          Charset: euckr
      Description: EUC-KR Korean
Default collation: euckr_korean_ci
           Maxlen: 2
*********** 16. row ***********
          Charset: gb18030
      Description: China National Standard GB18030
Default collation: gb18030_chinese_ci
           Maxlen: 4
*********** 17. row ***********
          Charset: gb2312
      Description: GB2312 Simplified Chinese
Default collation: gb2312_chinese_ci
           Maxlen: 2
*********** 18. row ***********
          Charset: gbk
      Description: GBK Simplified Chinese
Default collation: gbk_chinese_ci
           Maxlen: 2
*********** 19. row ***********
          Charset: geostd8
      Description: GEOSTD8 Georgian
Default collation: geostd8_general_ci
           Maxlen: 1
*********** 20. row ***********
          Charset: greek
      Description: ISO 8859-7 Greek
Default collation: greek_general_ci
           Maxlen: 1
*********** 21. row ***********
          Charset: hebrew
      Description: ISO 8859-8 Hebrew
Default collation: hebrew_general_ci
           Maxlen: 1
*********** 22. row ***********
          Charset: hp8
      Description: HP West European
Default collation: hp8_english_ci
           Maxlen: 1
*********** 23. row ***********
          Charset: keybcs2
      Description: DOS Kamenicky Czech-Slovak
Default collation: keybcs2_general_ci
           Maxlen: 1
*********** 24. row ***********
          Charset: koi8r
      Description: KOI8-R Relcom Russian
Default collation: koi8r_general_ci
           Maxlen: 1
*********** 25. row ***********
          Charset: koi8u
      Description: KOI8-U Ukrainian
Default collation: koi8u_general_ci
           Maxlen: 1
*********** 26. row ***********
          Charset: latin1
      Description: cp1252 West European
Default collation: latin1_swedish_ci
           Maxlen: 1
*********** 27. row ***********
          Charset: latin2
      Description: ISO 8859-2 Central European
Default collation: latin2_general_ci
           Maxlen: 1
*********** 28. row ***********
          Charset: latin5
      Description: ISO 8859-9 Turkish
Default collation: latin5_turkish_ci
           Maxlen: 1
*********** 29. row ***********
          Charset: latin7
      Description: ISO 8859-13 Baltic
Default collation: latin7_general_ci
           Maxlen: 1
*********** 30. row ***********
          Charset: macce
      Description: Mac Central European
Default collation: macce_general_ci
           Maxlen: 1
*********** 31. row ***********
          Charset: macroman
      Description: Mac West European
Default collation: macroman_general_ci
           Maxlen: 1
*********** 32. row ***********
          Charset: sjis
      Description: Shift-JIS Japanese
Default collation: sjis_japanese_ci
           Maxlen: 2
*********** 33. row ***********
          Charset: swe7
      Description: 7bit Swedish
Default collation: swe7_swedish_ci
           Maxlen: 1
*********** 34. row ***********
          Charset: tis620
      Description: TIS620 Thai
Default collation: tis620_thai_ci
           Maxlen: 1
*********** 35. row ***********
          Charset: ucs2
      Description: UCS-2 Unicode
Default collation: ucs2_general_ci
           Maxlen: 2
*********** 36. row ***********
          Charset: ujis
      Description: EUC-JP Japanese
Default collation: ujis_japanese_ci
           Maxlen: 3
*********** 37. row ***********
          Charset: utf16
      Description: UTF-16 Unicode
Default collation: utf16_general_ci
           Maxlen: 4
*********** 38. row ***********
          Charset: utf16le
      Description: UTF-16LE Unicode
Default collation: utf16le_general_ci
           Maxlen: 4
*********** 39. row ***********
          Charset: utf32
      Description: UTF-32 Unicode
Default collation: utf32_general_ci
           Maxlen: 4
*********** 40. row ***********
          Charset: utf8mb3
      Description: UTF-8 Unicode
Default collation: utf8mb3_general_ci
           Maxlen: 3
*********** 41. row ***********
          Charset: utf8mb4
      Description: UTF-8 Unicode
Default collation: utf8mb4_0900_ai_ci
           Maxlen: 4

The LIKE clause

Using the LIKE clause, you can specify a pattern to retrieve the description of the specified character set −

SHOW CHARACTER SET LIKE '%utf%';

Output

Following is the output of the above query −

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

The WHERE clause

You can use the WHERE clause of the SHOW CHARACTER SET statements to retrieve description of the variables which match the specified condition.

SHOW CHARACTER SET WHERE Maxlen =4;

Output

After executing the above query, it will produce the following output &minusl;

Charset Description Default collation Maxlen
gb18030 China National Standard GB18030 gb18030_chinese_ci 4
utf16 UTF-16 Unicode utf16_general_ci 4
utf16le TF-16LE Unicode utf16le_general_ci 4
utf32 UTF-32 Unicode utf32_general_ci 4
utf8mb4 UTF-8 Unicode utf8mb4_0900_ai_ci 4
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