--查看所有可用的字符集的命令：
mysql> show character set;
+----------+-----------------------------+---------------------+--------+
| Charset | Description | Default collation | Maxlen |
+----------+-----------------------------+---------------------+--------+
| big5 | Big5 Traditional Chinese | big5_chinese_ci | 2 |
| dec8 | DEC West European | dec8_swedish_ci | 1 |
| cp850 | DOS West European | cp850_general_ci | 1 |
| hp8 | HP West European | hp8_english_ci | 1 |
| koi8r | KOI8-R Relcom Russian | koi8r_general_ci | 1 |
| latin1 | cp1252 West European | latin1_swedish_ci | 1 |
| latin2 | ISO 8859-2 Central European | latin2_general_ci | 1 |
| swe7 | 7bit Swedish | swe7_swedish_ci | 1 |
| ascii | US ASCII | ascii_general_ci | 1 |
| ujis | EUC-JP Japanese | ujis_japanese_ci | 3 |
| sjis | Shift-JIS Japanese | sjis_japanese_ci | 2 |
| hebrew | ISO 8859-8 Hebrew | hebrew_general_ci | 1 |
| tis620 | TIS620 Thai | tis620_thai_ci | 1 |
| euckr | EUC-KR Korean | euckr_korean_ci | 2 |
| koi8u | KOI8-U Ukrainian | koi8u_general_ci | 1 |
| gb2312 | GB2312 Simplified Chinese | gb2312_chinese_ci | 2 |
| greek | ISO 8859-7 Greek | greek_general_ci | 1 |
| cp1250 | Windows Central European | cp1250_general_ci | 1 |
| gbk | GBK Simplified Chinese | gbk_chinese_ci | 2 |
| latin5 | ISO 8859-9 Turkish | latin5_turkish_ci | 1 |
| armscii8 | ARMSCII-8 Armenian | armscii8_general_ci | 1 |
| utf8 | UTF-8 Unicode | utf8_general_ci | 3 |
| ucs2 | UCS-2 Unicode | ucs2_general_ci | 2 |
| cp866 | DOS Russian | cp866_general_ci | 1 |
| keybcs2 | DOS Kamenicky Czech-Slovak | keybcs2_general_ci | 1 |
| macce | Mac Central European | macce_general_ci | 1 |
| macroman | Mac West European | macroman_general_ci | 1 |
| cp852 | DOS Central European | cp852_general_ci | 1 |
| latin7 | ISO 8859-13 Baltic | latin7_general_ci | 1 |
| cp1251 | Windows Cyrillic | cp1251_general_ci | 1 |
| cp1256 | Windows Arabic | cp1256_general_ci | 1 |
| cp1257 | Windows Baltic | cp1257_general_ci | 1 |
| binary | Binary pseudo charset | binary | 1 |
| geostd8 | GEOSTD8 Georgian | geostd8_general_ci | 1 |
| cp932 | SJIS for Windows Japanese | cp932_japanese_ci | 2 |
| eucjpms | UJIS for Windows Japanese | eucjpms_japanese_ci | 3 |
+----------+-----------------------------+---------------------+--------+
36 rows in set (0.00 sec)
--查看information_schema.character_sets表可以显示所有的字符集和该字符集默认的校对规则。
mysql> desc information_schema.character_sets;
+----------------------+-------------+------+-----+---------+-------+
| Field | Type | Null | Key | Default | Extra |
+----------------------+-------------+------+-----+---------+-------+
| CHARACTER_SET_NAME | varchar(32) | NO | | | |
| DEFAULT_COLLATE_NAME | varchar(32) | NO | | | |
| DESCRIPTION | varchar(60) | NO | | | |
| MAXLEN | bigint(3) | NO | | 0 | |
+----------------------+-------------+------+-----+---------+-------+
4 rows in set (0.02 sec)
--mysql的字符集包括了字符集character和校对规则 colloation 两个概念。字符集是用来定义mysql存储字符串的方式，校对规则则是定义了比较字符串的方式。字符集和校对规则是一对多的关系。mysql支持30多种字符集和70多种校对规则。比如查看 字符集gbk的校对规则:
mysql> show collation like 'gbk%';
+----------------+---------+----+---------+----------+---------+
| Collation | Charset | Id | Default | Compiled | Sortlen |
+----------------+---------+----+---------+----------+---------+
| gbk_chinese_ci | gbk | 28 | Yes | Yes | 1 |
| gbk_bin | gbk | 87 | | Yes | 1 |
+----------------+---------+----+---------+----------+---------+
2 rows in set (0.00 sec)
--查看当前服务器的字符集和校对规则。
mysql> show variables like 'character_set_server';
+----------------------+--------+
| Variable_name | Value |
+----------------------+--------+
| character_set_server | latin1 |
+----------------------+--------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)
mysql> show variables like 'collation_server';
+------------------+-------------------+
| Variable_name | Value |
+------------------+-------------------+
| collation_server | latin1_swedish_ci |
+------------------+-------------------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)