SET NAMES

Purpose

You can use this statement to set the character set and the collation for the current session.

Syntax

SET NAMES 'charset_name' [COLLATE 'collation_name'];

Parameters

Examples

• Set the character set of the current session to gbk, and retain the default collation.

  obclient> SET NAMES 'gbk';
  Query OK, 0 rows affected
  
  obclient> SHOW VARIABLES LIKE 'character_set_c%';
  +--------------------------+-------+
  | VARIABLE_NAME            | VALUE |
  +--------------------------+-------+
  | character_set_client     | gbk   |
  | character_set_connection | gbk   |
  +--------------------------+-------+
  2 rows in set
  
  obclient> SHOW VARIABLES LIKE 'collation_connection';
  +----------------------+----------------+
  | VARIABLE_NAME        | VALUE          |
  +----------------------+----------------+
  | collation_connection | gbk_chinese_ci |
  +----------------------+----------------+
  1 row in set
  

• Set the character set to utf8mb4 and the collation to utf8mb4_general_ci for the current session.

  obclient> SET NAMES 'utf8mb4' COLLATE 'utf8mb4_general_ci';
  Query OK, 0 rows affected
  
  obclient> SHOW VARIABLES LIKE 'character_set_c%';
  +--------------------------+---------+
  | VARIABLE_NAME            | VALUE   |
  +--------------------------+---------+
  | character_set_client     | utf8mb4 |
  | character_set_connection | utf8mb4 |
  +--------------------------+---------+
  2 rows in set
  
  obclient> SHOW VARIABLES LIKE 'collation_connection';
  +----------------------+--------------------+
  | VARIABLE_NAME        | VALUE              |
  +----------------------+--------------------+
  | collation_connection | utf8mb4_general_ci |
  +----------------------+--------------------+
  1 row in set