MySQL search with uft8_general_ci is case sensitive for FULLTEXT?

Question

I set up a MyISAM table to do FULLTEXT searching. I do not want searches to be case-sensitive.

My searches are along the lines of:

SELECT * FROM search WHERE MATCH (keywords) AGAINST ('+diversity +kitten' IN BOOLEAN MODE);

Let's say the keywords field I'm looking for has the value "my Diversity kitten".

I noticed the searches were case-sensitive. I double-checked my collation on the search table, it was set to utf8_bin. D'oh! I changed it to utf8_general_ci.

But my query is still case-sensitive! Why?

Is there a server setting I need to change, too?

Is there something I need to do besides change the collation?

I did a "REPAIR TABLE search QUICK" to rebuild the FULLTEXT index, but that didn't do it either...

My searches are still case-sensitive. =(

Answer 1

Aha, figured it out for reals this time.

I believe my issue was using NaviCat to update the collation. I have an older version of NaviCat, maybe it was a bug or something.

Doing:

ALTER TABLE search CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_general_ci;

fixed it correctly.

Always use command line, kids! =)

Answer 2

Hmm - that behavior doesn't match the manual:

By default, the search is performed in case-insensitive fashion. However, you can perform a case-sensitive full-text search by using a binary collation for the indexed columns. For example, a column that uses the latin1 character set of can be assigned a collation of latin1_bin to make it case sensitive for full-text searches.

Which version of MySQL do you use? Can you provide some data that would allow replicating the problem on another machine?