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by happenstance 5984 days ago
Why does MySQL still default to latin1? (Or am I mistaken?)
2 comments
ars 5984 days ago
Just run:

ALTER DATABASE database_name DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_general_ci;

And you don't have to worry about it for any new tables. (If you have existing ones, you'll have to change the table default, and possibly the column too.)

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wvenable 5984 days ago
Because changing the defaults might mean a world of hurt for people not expecting it. You should just always be explicit.
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happenstance 5984 days ago
> You should just always be explicit.

I generally agree.

Note: I think if you leave out any specific encoding configuration from your my.cnf, mysql implicitly goes with latin1.

For users who are assuming a modern unicode/utf8 default setup, might be nice if the mysql folks would require an explicit config for this setting.

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