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MySQL Charsets

Running `SHOW CHARACTER SET` as an SQL Statement returns the following:


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

` ~ ! @ # $ % ^ & * ( ) _ + - = [ ] { } | ; ' : " , . < > / ?

"When in doubt, use utf8mb4_unicode_520_ci as it offers the greatest number of characters that you can store, and it sorts characters in the most correct way possible."

"utf8mb4 has become the default character set, with utf8mb4_0900_ai_ci as the default collation in MySQL 8.0.1 and later."

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