At 8:49 AM -0700 4/16/08, Rob Wultsch wrote:
>On Wed, Apr 16, 2008 at 7:24 AM, Paul DuBois <paul@mysql.com> wrote:
>>
>> > When you create a table, you can specify a character set for a column. How
>> > can you tell what character set was used when the column was created?
>> >
>>
>> SHOW CREATE TABLE. If no character set is shown for the column,
>> it uses the table default character set.
>>
>> Example:
>>
>> mysql> create table t (c1 char(5) character set utf8, c2 char(5));
>> Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.16 sec)
>>
>> mysql> show create table t\G
>> *************************** 1. row ***************************
>> Table: t
>> Create Table: CREATE TABLE `t` (
>> `c1` char(5) CHARACTER SET utf8 DEFAULT NULL,
>> `c2` char(5) DEFAULT NULL
>> ) ENGINE=MyISAM DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1
>> 1 row in set (0.00 sec)
>>
>> The definition for c1 shows that utf8 is used
>>
>> The definition for c2 shows nothing, so the table character set (latin1)
>> is used.
>>
>> --
>> Paul DuBois, MySQL Documentation Team
>> Madison, Wisconsin, USA
>> MySQL AB, www.mysql.com
>
>Is there any reason that the information_schema would not be the
>preferred method of finding this information?
>mysql> select table_collation from tables WHERE `table_name` =
>'mytable' AND table_schema ='mydatabase'\G

You can do that, too, unless your version of MySQL is older than 5.0.

--
Paul DuBois, MySQL Documentation Team
Madison, Wisconsin, USA
MySQL AB, www.mysql.com