MySQL - SET CHARACTER SET Statement

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A 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.

SHOW CHARACTER SET\G;

Output

The above mysql query produces the following output −

*********** 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

You can get the name of the default character set using the following query −

SELECT default_character_set_name FROM information_schema.SCHEMATA S 
WHERE schema_name = "test";

Output

After executing the above mysql query, it generates the output shown below −

DEFAULT_CHARACTER_SET_NAME
utf8mb4

The SET CHARACTER SET Statement

The SET CHARACTER SET Statement of MySQL is used to assign a value to the character set attribute. It maps all the strings between the server and the current client with the specified mapping set. This statement changes values of the character_set_client and character_set_results variables.

Syntax

Following is the syntax of the MySQL SET CHARACTER SET Statement −

SET {CHARACTER SET | CHARSET}
   {'charset_name' | DEFAULT}

Where, 'charset_name' is the name of the character set.

Example

Following query sets the character set to macroman −

SET CHARACTER SET macroman;

Verification

You can verify the current value of the character_set_client and character_set_results variables using the show variables like statement as shown below −

show variables like "character_set_client";

Output

The above query produces the following output −

Variable_name	Value
character_set_client	macroman

show variables like "character_set_results";

Output

Following is the output of the above mysql query −

Variable_name	Value
character_set_results	macroman

The DEFAULT value

You can set the character set mapping to the default one of the databases using the DEFAULT as value as shown below −

SET CHARACTER SET DEFAULT;

Since the default character set is utf8mb4, the values of the character_set_client and character_set_results variables are set to it. You can verify these values as shown below −

show variables like "character_set_results";

Output

After executing the above query, it produces the following output −

Variable_name	Value
character_set_results	utf8mb4

show variables like "character_set_client";

Output

The above mysql query will generate the output shown below −

Variable_name	Value
character_set_client	utf8mb4

SET CHARSET statement

You can also use the CHARSET keyword instead of CHARACTER SET as shown below −

SET CHARSET latin7;

Verification

Let us verify the current value of the character_set_client or, character_set_results variables using the show variables like statement as shown below −

show variables like "character_set_client";

Output

After executing the above query, it will produce the following output −

Variable_name	Value
character_set_client	latin7