Storing ASCII Characters in Non-ASCII Columns

<< MySQL - Character Set and Encoding

<< Building Chinese Web Sites using PHP

This section describes a test of storing ASCII characters into non-ASCII columns.

The first test I did is to store ASCII characters into columns defined for non-ASCII character sets like, Latin1, UTF-8, GBK, and Big5. The test was done with this PHP script:

<?php #MySQL-Insert-ASCII.php
# Copyright (c) 2007 by Dr. Herong Yang, http://www.herongyang.com/
#
  $con = mysql_connect("localhost", "Herong", "TopSecret");
  $ok = mysql_select_db("HerongDB", $con);
  $test_name = "ASCII Test";
  
# Delete the record
  $sql = "DELETE FROM Comment_Mixed WHERE Test_Name ='$test_name'";
  if (mysql_query($sql, $con)) {
    print("Number of rows deleted: ".mysql_affected_rows()."\n");
  } else {
    print("SQL statement failed.\n");
    print(mysql_errno($con).": ".mysql_error($con)."\n"); 
  }

# Build the SQL INSERT statement
  $sql = <<<END_OF_MESSAGE
INSERT INTO Comment_Mixed (Test_Name, String_ASCII, 
    String_Latin1, String_UTF8, String_GBK, String_Big5)
  VALUES ('$test_name', 'Television', 
    'Television', 'Television', 'Television', 'Television')
END_OF_MESSAGE;

# Run the SQL statement
  if (mysql_query($sql, $con)) {
    print("Number of rows inserted: ".mysql_affected_rows()."\n");
  } else {
    print("SQL statement failed.\n");
    print(mysql_errno($con).": ".mysql_error($con)."\n"); 
  }

# Get the recod back
  $sql = "SELECT * FROM Comment_Mixed"
    . " WHERE Test_Name = '$test_name'";
  $res = mysql_query($sql, $con);
  if ($row = mysql_fetch_array($res)) {
    print("\nTest Name = ".$row['Test_Name']."\n");
    print("   String_ASCII: ".$row['String_ASCII']."\n");
    print("   String_Latin1: ".$row['String_Latin1']."\n");
    print("   String_UTF8: ".$row['String_UTF8']."\n");
    print("   String_GBK: ".$row['String_GBK']."\n");
    print("   String_Big5: ".$row['String_Big5']."\n");
  }  
  mysql_free_result($res);

  mysql_close($con); 
?>

The output tells me that ASCCI characters can be stored in character sets: ascii, latin1, utf8, gbk, and big5, because they are all compatible with ASCII:

C:\>\local\php\php MySQL-Insert-ASCII.php
Number of rows deleted: 0
Number of rows inserted: 1

Test Name = ASCII Test
   String_ASCII: Television
   String_Latin1: Television
   String_UTF8: Television
   String_GBK: Television
   String_Big5: Television

Sections in This Chapter

Specifying Character Set for Text Columns

Creating a Table with Multiple Character Sets

Checking Character Set Setting

Storing ASCII Characters in Non-ASCII Columns

Storing Non-ASCII Characters with Encoded Bytes

Transmitting Non-ASCII Characters between PHP and MySQL

Viewing Character Set Variables

Non-ASCII Test Result Analysis

Fetching Non-ASCII Text from MySQL