Converting mysql tables from latin1 to utf8

Question

I\'m trying to convert some mysql tables from latin1 to utf8. I\'m using the following command, which seems to mostly work.

ALTER TABLE tablename CONVERT TO          


        

Answer 1

UTF8_GENERAL_CI is accent insensitive.

Use UTF8_BIN or a language-specific collation.

Answer 2

The reason why the strings 'Drü' and 'Dru' evaluate as the same is that in the utf8_general_ci collation, they count as "the same". The purpose of a collation for a character set is to provide a set of rules as to when strings are the same, when one sorts before the other, and so on.

If you want a different set of comparison rules, you need to choose a different collation. You can see the available collations for the utf8 character set by issuing SHOW COLLATION LIKE 'utf8%'. There are a bunch of collations intended for text that is mostly in a specific language; there is also the utf8_bin collation which compares all strings as binary strings (i.e. compares them as sequences of 0s and 1s).