查看MySQL中的字符集：
mysql> show variables like '%char%';
+--------------------------+----------------------------+
| Variable_name | Value |
+--------------------------+----------------------------+
| character_set_client | utf8 |
| character_set_connection | utf8 |
| character_set_database | latin1 |
| character_set_filesystem | binary |
| character_set_results | utf8 |
| character_set_server | latin1 |
| character_set_system | utf8 |
| character_sets_dir | /usr/share/mysql/charsets/ |
+--------------------------+----------------------------+
8 rows in set (0.00 sec)character_set_server: 服务器级别的字符集
character_set_database: 当前数据库的字符集
character_set_client: 服务器解码请求时使用的字符集
character_set_connection: 服务器处理请求时会把请求字符串从character_set_client转为character_set_connection
character_set_results: 服务器向客户端返回数据时使用的字符集
MySQL有4个级别的字符集和比较规则，分别是
my.cnf配置文件character-set-server的字符集查看MySQL支持的字符集（Charset）和对应的比较规则（Default collation）以及占用大小（Maxlen）:
mysql> show charset;
+----------+---------------------------------+---------------------+--------+
| Charset | Description | Default collation | Maxlen |
+----------+---------------------------------+---------------------+--------+
| big5 | Big5 Traditional Chinese | big5_chinese_ci | 2 |
| dec8 | DEC West European | dec8_swedish_ci | 1 |
| cp850 | DOS West European | cp850_general_ci | 1 |
| hp8 | HP West European | hp8_english_ci | 1 |
| koi8r | KOI8-R Relcom Russian | koi8r_general_ci | 1 |
| latin1 | cp1252 West European | latin1_swedish_ci | 1 |
| latin2 | ISO 8859-2 Central European | latin2_general_ci | 1 |
| swe7 | 7bit Swedish | swe7_swedish_ci | 1 |
| ascii | US ASCII | ascii_general_ci | 1 |
| ujis | EUC-JP Japanese | ujis_japanese_ci | 3 |
| sjis | Shift-JIS Japanese | sjis_japanese_ci | 2 |
| hebrew | ISO 8859-8 Hebrew | hebrew_general_ci | 1 |
| tis620 | TIS620 Thai | tis620_thai_ci | 1 |
| euckr | EUC-KR Korean | euckr_korean_ci | 2 |
| koi8u | KOI8-U Ukrainian | koi8u_general_ci | 1 |
| gb2312 | GB2312 Simplified Chinese | gb2312_chinese_ci | 2 |
| greek | ISO 8859-7 Greek | greek_general_ci | 1 |
| cp1250 | Windows Central European | cp1250_general_ci | 1 |
| gbk | GBK Simplified Chinese | gbk_chinese_ci | 2 |
| latin5 | ISO 8859-9 Turkish | latin5_turkish_ci | 1 |
| armscii8 | ARMSCII-8 Armenian | armscii8_general_ci | 1 |
| utf8 | UTF-8 Unicode | utf8_general_ci | 3 |
| ucs2 | UCS-2 Unicode | ucs2_general_ci | 2 |
| cp866 | DOS Russian | cp866_general_ci | 1 |
| keybcs2 | DOS Kamenicky Czech-Slovak | keybcs2_general_ci | 1 |
| macce | Mac Central European | macce_general_ci | 1 |
| macroman | Mac West European | macroman_general_ci | 1 |
| cp852 | DOS Central European | cp852_general_ci | 1 |
| latin7 | ISO 8859-13 Baltic | latin7_general_ci | 1 |
| utf8mb4 | UTF-8 Unicode | utf8mb4_general_ci | 4 |
| cp1251 | Windows Cyrillic | cp1251_general_ci | 1 |
| utf16 | UTF-16 Unicode | utf16_general_ci | 4 |
| utf16le | UTF-16LE Unicode | utf16le_general_ci | 4 |
| cp1256 | Windows Arabic | cp1256_general_ci | 1 |
| cp1257 | Windows Baltic | cp1257_general_ci | 1 |
| utf32 | UTF-32 Unicode | utf32_general_ci | 4 |
| binary | Binary pseudo charset | binary | 1 |
| geostd8 | GEOSTD8 Georgian | geostd8_general_ci | 1 |
| cp932 | SJIS for Windows Japanese | cp932_japanese_ci | 2 |
| eucjpms | UJIS for Windows Japanese | eucjpms_japanese_ci | 3 |
| gb18030 | China National Standard GB18030 | gb18030_chinese_ci | 4 |
+----------+---------------------------------+---------------------+--------+
41 rows in set (0.00 sec)utf8字符集表示一个字符需要使用1-4个字节，但是我们常用的一些字符使用1-3个字节就可以表示了。而字符集表示一个字符所用的最大字节长度，在某些方面会影响系统的存储和性能，所以设计MySOL的设计者自定义了两个概念
在MySQL中utf8是utf8mb3的别名，所以之后在MySQL中提到utf8就意味着使用1-3个字节来表示一个字符。如果有使用4字节编码一个字符的情况，比如存储一些emoii表情，那请使用utf8mb4。
show charset;表中，一共支持41种字符集，其中的Default collation列表示这种字符集默认的比较规则，里面包含着该比较规则主要作用于哪种语言，比如utf8_polish_ci表示以波兰语的规则比较，utf8_spanish_ci是以西班牙语的规则比较，utf8_general_ci是一种通用的比较规则。
后缀表示该比较规则是否区分语言中的重音、大小写，具体如下:
| 后缀 | 英文释义 | 描述 |
|---|---|---|
| _ai | accent insensitive | 不区分重音 |
| _as | accent sensitive | 区分重音 |
| _ci | case insensitive | 不区分大小写 |
| _cs | case sensitive | 区分大小写 |
| _bin | binary | 以二进制方式比较 |
查看某种字符集的比较规则
mysql> SHOW COLLATION LIKE'utf8%';
+--------------------------+---------+-----+---------+----------+---------+
| Collation | Charset | Id | Default | Compiled | Sortlen |
+--------------------------+---------+-----+---------+----------+---------+
| utf8_general_ci | utf8 | 33 | Yes | Yes | 1 |
| utf8_bin | utf8 | 83 | | Yes | 1 |
| utf8_unicode_ci | utf8 | 192 | | Yes | 8 |
| utf8_icelandic_ci | utf8 | 193 | | Yes | 8 |
| utf8_latvian_ci | utf8 | 194 | | Yes | 8 |
| utf8_romanian_ci | utf8 | 195 | | Yes | 8 |
| utf8_slovenian_ci | utf8 | 196 | | Yes | 8 |
| utf8_polish_ci | utf8 | 197 | | Yes | 8 |
| utf8_estonian_ci | utf8 | 198 | | Yes | 8 |
| utf8_spanish_ci | utf8 | 199 | | Yes | 8 |
| utf8_swedish_ci | utf8 | 200 | | Yes | 8 |
| utf8_turkish_ci | utf8 | 201 | | Yes | 8 |
| utf8_czech_ci | utf8 | 202 | | Yes | 8 |
| utf8_danish_ci | utf8 | 203 | | Yes | 8 |
| utf8_lithuanian_ci | utf8 | 204 | | Yes | 8 |
| utf8_slovak_ci | utf8 | 205 | | Yes | 8 |
| utf8_spanish2_ci | utf8 | 206 | | Yes | 8 |
| utf8_roman_ci | utf8 | 207 | | Yes | 8 |
| utf8_persian_ci | utf8 | 208 | | Yes | 8 |
| utf8_esperanto_ci | utf8 | 209 | | Yes | 8 |
| utf8_hungarian_ci | utf8 | 210 | | Yes | 8 |
| utf8_sinhala_ci | utf8 | 211 | | Yes | 8 |
| utf8_german2_ci | utf8 | 212 | | Yes | 8 |
| utf8_croatian_ci | utf8 | 213 | | Yes | 8 |
| utf8_unicode_520_ci | utf8 | 214 | | Yes | 8 |
| utf8_vietnamese_ci | utf8 | 215 | | Yes | 8 |
| utf8_general_mysql500_ci | utf8 | 223 | | Yes | 1 |
| utf8mb4_general_ci | utf8mb4 | 45 | Yes | Yes | 1 |
| utf8mb4_bin | utf8mb4 | 46 | | Yes | 1 |
| utf8mb4_unicode_ci | utf8mb4 | 224 | | Yes | 8 |
| utf8mb4_icelandic_ci | utf8mb4 | 225 | | Yes | 8 |
| utf8mb4_latvian_ci | utf8mb4 | 226 | | Yes | 8 |
| utf8mb4_romanian_ci | utf8mb4 | 227 | | Yes | 8 |
| utf8mb4_slovenian_ci | utf8mb4 | 228 | | Yes | 8 |
| utf8mb4_polish_ci | utf8mb4 | 229 | | Yes | 8 |
| utf8mb4_estonian_ci | utf8mb4 | 230 | | Yes | 8 |
| utf8mb4_spanish_ci | utf8mb4 | 231 | | Yes | 8 |
| utf8mb4_swedish_ci | utf8mb4 | 232 | | Yes | 8 |
| utf8mb4_turkish_ci | utf8mb4 | 233 | | Yes | 8 |
| utf8mb4_czech_ci | utf8mb4 | 234 | | Yes | 8 |
| utf8mb4_danish_ci | utf8mb4 | 235 | | Yes | 8 |
| utf8mb4_lithuanian_ci | utf8mb4 | 236 | | Yes | 8 |
| utf8mb4_slovak_ci | utf8mb4 | 237 | | Yes | 8 |
| utf8mb4_spanish2_ci | utf8mb4 | 238 | | Yes | 8 |
| utf8mb4_roman_ci | utf8mb4 | 239 | | Yes | 8 |
| utf8mb4_persian_ci | utf8mb4 | 240 | | Yes | 8 |
| utf8mb4_esperanto_ci | utf8mb4 | 241 | | Yes | 8 |
| utf8mb4_hungarian_ci | utf8mb4 | 242 | | Yes | 8 |
| utf8mb4_sinhala_ci | utf8mb4 | 243 | | Yes | 8 |
| utf8mb4_german2_ci | utf8mb4 | 244 | | Yes | 8 |
| utf8mb4_croatian_ci | utf8mb4 | 245 | | Yes | 8 |
| utf8mb4_unicode_520_ci | utf8mb4 | 246 | | Yes | 8 |
| utf8mb4_vietnamese_ci | utf8mb4 | 247 | | Yes | 8 |
+--------------------------+---------+-----+---------+----------+---------+
53 rows in set (0.00 sec)
查看服务器的字符集和比较规则
mysql> SHOW VARIABLES LIKE '%_server';
+----------------------+-------------------+
| Variable_name | Value |
+----------------------+-------------------+
| character_set_server | latin1 |
| collation_server | latin1_swedish_ci |
+----------------------+-------------------+
2 rows in set (0.02 sec)查看当前数据库的字符集和比较规则
mysql> SHOW VARIABLES LIKE '%_database';
+------------------------+-------------------+
| Variable_name | Value |
+------------------------+-------------------+
| character_set_database | latin1 |
| collation_database | latin1_swedish_ci |
| skip_show_database | OFF |
+------------------------+-------------------+
3 rows in set (0.00 sec)修改具体数据库的字符集
ALTER DATABASE dbtest DEFAULT CHARACTER SET 'utf8' COLLATE 'utf8_general_ci';utf8_unicode_ci和utf8_general_ci对中、英文来说没有实质的差别。utf8_general_ci校对速度快，但准确度稍差。utf8_unicode_ci准确度高，但校对速度稍慢。
⚠️ 一般情况，用
utf8_general_ci就够了，但如果你的应用有德语、法语或者俄语，请一定使用utf8_unicode_ci。
⚠️ 修改了数据库的默认字符集和比较规则后，原来已经创建的表格的字符集和比较规则并不会改变，如果需要，那么需单独修改。
此内容由惯性聚合(RSS阅读器)自动聚合整理，仅供阅读参考。 原文来自 — 版权归原作者所有。