How Can I Detect and Identify Non-ASCII Characters in My MySQL Database?

Unveiling Non-ASCII Characters in MySQL

Encountering non-ASCII characters, concealed carriage returns, or line feeds in MySQL data imported from Excel can be puzzling. Thankfully, MySQL's robust character set management offers a way to locate these records efficiently.

MySQL employs the CONVERT() function, which operates by transforming problematic characters into specific replacement characters. Consequently, by comparing the original text with the converted text, we can isolate the non-conforming characters. This distinction in values indicates the presence of non-ASCII characters.

To execute this process, one can utilize the following query:

SELECT whatever
FROM tableName
WHERE columnToCheck <> CONVERT(columnToCheck USING ASCII)

By replacing "ASCII" with an appropriate character set name, this method supports the identification of characters specific to different coding systems. For instance, using CONVERT(columnToCheck USING cp1257) would highlight characters that pose compatibility issues in code page 1257.

Additional resources can be found at the following URL:

https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/8.0/en/charset-repertoire.html

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