Re: Collation Weirdness with UNION in VIEW

[Rick James]

Please provide the output of SHOW CREATE VIEW.
And note the collation that it states.
And who created the VIEW.

Are you using SET NAMES utf8?

Please paste the exact command; I see two syntax errors:
SELECT CAST(price AS char(10) COLLATE utf_general_ci AS description FROM table

> The documentation says it will use the default character set (which is utf8) but is not clear on collation.

The default collation for utf8 is utf8_general_ci.

SHOW VARIABLES LIKE 'char%';

Do you actually need CAST?
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.5/en/type-conversion.html