What is the difference between latin1_general_ci and utf8_bin in MYSQL

Question

I am currently working with multi-lingual site. In some cases i need to save the other language data in the database. While i did it does not save the actual data what i entered. Instead of it contains "?????????????????????". After that i changed the collation latin1_general_ci into utf8_bin.

Then its working well now.

could anyone explain me the differences between collation available in mysql

Thanks in Advance.

Fero

Answer 1

utf8_bin: compare strings by the binary value of each character in the string

utf8_general_ci: compare strings using general language rules and using case-insensitive comparisons

utf8_general_cs: compare strings using general language rules and using case-sensitive comparisons

For example, the following will evaluate at true with either of the UTF8_general collations, but not with the utf8_bin collation: Code:

Ä = A
Ö = O
Ü = U

With the utf8_general_ci collation, they would also return true even if not the same case.

None of these is inherently "better"; they simply have different functionalities. You need to choose which one best suits your particular needs.