Re: How to know that foreign characters are being inserted as utf-8?

[Peter Gulutzan]

Hi,

Start by checking the MySQL Reference Manual
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.5/en/faqs-cjk.html
in the section
"I have inserted CJK characters into my table. Why does SELECT display them as “?” characters?"
Continue by checking the many many instances on this forum
where variants of this same question have been asked.

The first two strings have characters which are in most character sets
including latin1. The third string is pure Greek. If your 'foreign'
characters are "being inserted as utf8", and your display is utf8,
you will see this on a terminal with mysql:

mysql> select 'Ελληνικά',hex('Ελληνικά');
+------------------+----------------------------------+
| Ελληνικά | hex('Ελληνικά') |
+------------------+----------------------------------+
| Ελληνικά | CE95CEBBCEBBCEB7CEBDCEB9CEBACEAC |
+------------------+----------------------------------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)



Peter Gulutzan
MySQL / Sun