Re: Cannot get mysqldump to produce utf-8 encoded files!

[Erik Alm]

Hello,

This is how I solved this problem.

First I set the char-sets dir (which I believe shouldn't be needed since mysqldump complained when I didn't use a name from the Index.xml in that dir)... anyway I set it like this:

--character-sets-dir=/usr/share/mysql/charsets

Second off, I found using the "utf8" charset did not do the trick (don't ask me why) by instead using "latin1" like this:

--default-character-set=latin1

I managed to make special characters display correctly.

If I do "file -in" on one of the files (thanks for the tip by the way!) I get:

$ file -in gallery2.sql
gallery2.sql: text/plain; charset=utf-8

So I guess you can have utf8 output even when using "latin1" in mysql-speak...

I also guess you should go through /usr/share/mysql/charsets/Index.xml to find your language/country and its corresponding char-set. God help you if you try to store data in more than one language ... or something :S

Finally I need to point out that aside from manually checking the file for special chars I've done no restore test of any kind (simply because I wanted to get backups up and running before doing anything with the database... I guess that should include restore testing as well... oh well...)

HTH

/E