mysql> show variables like '%char%';
+--------------------------+-------------------------------------+------
| Variable_name | Value |......
+--------------------------+-------------------------------------+------
| character_set_client | utf8 |...... -- 客户端字符集
| character_set_connection | utf8 |......
| character_set_database | utf8 |...... -- 数据库字符集
| character_set_filesystem | binary |......
| character_set_results | utf8 |......
| character_set_server | utf8 |...... -- 服务器字符集
| character_set_system | utf8 |......
| character_sets_dir | D:MySQL Server 5.0sharecharsets |......
+--------------------------+-------------------------------------+------

mysql> show table status from sqlstudy_db like '%countries%';
+-----------+--------+---------+------------+------+-----------------+------
| Name | Engine | Version | Row_format | Rows | Collation |......
+-----------+--------+---------+------------+------+-----------------+------
| countries | InnoDB | 10 | Compact | 11 | utf8_general_ci |......
+-----------+--------+---------+------------+------+-----------------+------

mysql> show full columns from countries;
+----------------------+-------------+-----------------+--------
| Field | Type | Collation | .......
+----------------------+-------------+-----------------+--------
| countries_id | int(11) | NULL | .......
| countries_name | varchar(64) | utf8_general_ci | .......
| countries_iso_code_2 | char(2) | utf8_general_ci | .......
| countries_iso_code_3 | char(3) | utf8_general_ci | .......
| address_format_id | int(11) | NULL | .......
+----------------------+-------------+-----------------+--------

mysql> show charset;
mysql> show char 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 |
+----------+-----------------------------+---------------------+--------+

--转自