Character sets database

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matthijs
DevNet Master
Posts: 3360
Joined: Thu Oct 06, 2005 3:57 pm

Character sets database

Post by matthijs »

Working with phpmyadmin I sometimes run into problems related to the character sets. For example, I do an export from phpmyadmin from a remote server and import the tables in a local database. Then suddenly some characters (like ú ë) get turned into messy characters.

I know this is the reslt of the first database (tables) being in character set 1 (maybe latin1) and the second database (tables) in another (maybe utf-8).

My question is very practical:
- were do I look in phpmyadmin to know which character encoding the database tables are in?
Looking at the server variables and settings withing PhpMyadmin on my local setup there is a long list of variables and settings dealing with encoding (character set client, global, character set connection,character set database,character set results,etc etc)

- And how can I make sure the transfer goes better?
If I look at the page were you can do an import in the db (using the sql file) I see a dropdown menu with the option to choose the encoding.
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