MySQL服务器能够支持多种字符集。可以使用SHOW CHARACTER SET语句列出可用的字符集：
mysql> SHOW CHARACTER SET;
+----------+-----------------------------+---------------------+--------+
| 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 |
...
（完整列表参见10.10节，“MySQL支持的字符集和校对”。）
任何一个给定的字符集至少有一个校对规则。它可能有几个校对规则。
要想列出一个字符集的校对规则，使用SHOW COLLATION语句。例如，要想查看latin1（“西欧ISO-8859-1”）字符集的 校对规则，使用下面的语句查找那些名字以latin1开头的 校对规则：
mysql> SHOW COLLATION LIKE 'latin1%';
+---------------------+---------+----+---------+----------+---------+
| Collation | Charset | Id | Default | Compiled | Sortlen |
+---------------------+---------+----+---------+----------+---------+
| latin1_german1_ci | latin1 | 5 | | | 0 |
| latin1_swedish_ci | latin1 | 8 | Yes | Yes | 1 |
| latin1_danish_ci | latin1 | 15 | | | 0 |
| latin1_german2_ci | latin1 | 31 | | Yes | 2 |
| latin1_bin | latin1 | 47 | | Yes | 1 |
| latin1_general_ci | latin1 | 48 | | | 0 |
| latin1_general_cs | latin1 | 49 | | | 0 |
| latin1_spanish_ci | latin1 | 94 | | | 0 |
+---------------------+---------+----+---------+----------+---------+
latin1校对规则有下面的含义：
|
校对规则 |
含义 |
|
latin1_german1_ci |
德国DIN-1 |
|
latin1_swedish_ci |
瑞典/芬兰 |
|
latin1_danish_ci |
丹麦/挪威 |
|
latin1_german2_ci |
德国 DIN-2 |
|
latin1_bin |
符合latin1编码的二进制 |
|
latin1_general_ci |
多种语言(西欧) |
|
latin1_general_cs |
多种语言(西欧ISO),大小写敏感 |
|
latin1_spanish_ci |
现代西班牙 |
校对规则一般有这些特征：
· 两个不同的字符集不能有相同的校对规则。
· 每个字符集有一个默认校对规则。例如，latin1默认校对规则是latin1_swedish_ci。
· 存在校对规则命名约定：它们以其相关的字符集名开始，通常包括一个语言名，并且以_ci（大小写不敏感）、_cs（大小写敏感）或_bin（二元）结束。