National Character Set
Standard SQL defines NCHAR
or NATIONAL CHAR
as a way to indicate that a CHAR
column should use some predefined character set. MariaDB 5.6 uses utf8
as this predefined character set. For example, these data type declarations are equivalent:
CHAR(10) CHARACTER SET utf8 NATIONAL CHARACTER(10) NCHAR(10)
As are these:
VARCHAR(10) CHARACTER SET utf8 NATIONAL VARCHAR(10) NCHAR VARCHAR(10) NATIONAL CHARACTER VARYING(10) NATIONAL CHAR VARYING(10)
You can use N'
(or literal
'n'
) to create a string in the national character set. These statements are equivalent:
literal
'
SELECT N'some text'; SELECT n'some text'; SELECT _utf8'some text';
For information on upgrading character sets to MariaDB 5.6 from versions prior to 4.1, see the MySQL 3.23, 4.0, 4.1 Reference Manual.