CHARACTER SET specifies the character set. If desired, a collation for the character set can be specified with the COLLATE attribute, along with any other attributes. For example:

CREATE TABLE t
(
    c1 VARCHAR(20) CHARACTER SET utf8mb4,
    c2 TEXT CHARACTER SET latin1 COLLATE latin1_general_cs
);

This table definition creates a column named c1 that has a character set of utf8mb4 with the default collation for that character set, and a column named c2 that has a character set of latin1 and a case-sensitive (_cs) collation.

The rules for assigning the character set and collation when either or both of CHARACTER SET and the COLLATE attribute are missing are described in Section 12.3.5, “Column Character Set and Collation”.

CHARSET is a synonym for CHARACTER SET.

Specifying the CHARACTER SET binary attribute for a character string data type causes the column to be created as the corresponding binary string data type: CHAR becomes BINARY, VARCHAR becomes VARBINARY, and TEXT becomes BLOB. For the ENUM and SET data types, this does not occur; they are created as declared. Suppose that you specify a table using this definition:

CREATE TABLE t
(
  c1 VARCHAR(10) CHARACTER SET binary,
  c2 TEXT CHARACTER SET binary,
  c3 ENUM('a','b','c') CHARACTER SET binary
);

The resulting table has this definition:

CREATE TABLE t
(
  c1 VARBINARY(10),
  c2 BLOB,
  c3 ENUM('a','b','c') CHARACTER SET binary
);

The BINARY attribute is a nonstandard MySQL extension that is shorthand for specifying the binary (_bin) collation of the column character set (or of the table default character set if no column character set is specified). In this case, comparison and sorting are based on numeric character code values. Suppose that you specify a table using this definition:

CREATE TABLE t
(
  c1 VARCHAR(10) CHARACTER SET latin1 BINARY,
  c2 TEXT BINARY
) CHARACTER SET utf8mb4;

The resulting table has this definition:

CREATE TABLE t (
  c1 VARCHAR(10) CHARACTER SET latin1 COLLATE latin1_bin,
  c2 TEXT CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_bin
) CHARACTER SET utf8mb4;

In MySQL 8.0, this nonstandard use of the BINARY attribute is ambiguous because the utf8mb4 character set has multiple _bin collations. As of MySQL 8.0.17, the BINARY attribute is deprecated and you should expect support for it to be removed in a future version of MySQL. Applications should be adjusted to use an explicit _bin collation instead.

The use of BINARY to specify a data type or character set remains unchanged.

The ASCII attribute is shorthand for CHARACTER SET latin1. Supported in older MySQL releases, ASCII is deprecated in MySQL 8.0.28 and later; use CHARACTER SET instead.

The UNICODE attribute is shorthand for CHARACTER SET ucs2. Supported in older MySQL releases, UNICODE is deprecated in MySQL 8.0.28 and later; use CHARACTER SET instead.

[NATIONAL] CHAR[(M)] [CHARACTER SET charset_name] [COLLATE collation_name]

A fixed-length string that is always right-padded with spaces to the specified length when stored. M represents the column length in characters. The range of M is 0 to 255. If M is omitted, the length is 1.

CHAR is shorthand for CHARACTER. NATIONAL CHAR (or its equivalent short form, NCHAR) is the standard SQL way to define that a CHAR column should use some predefined character set. MySQL uses utf8mb3 as this predefined character set. Section 12.3.7, “The National Character Set”.

The CHAR BYTE data type is an alias for the BINARY data type. This is a compatibility feature.

MySQL permits you to create a column of type CHAR(0). This is useful primarily when you must be compliant with old applications that depend on the existence of a column but that do not actually use its value. CHAR(0) is also quite nice when you need a column that can take only two values: A column that is defined as CHAR(0) NULL occupies only one bit and can take only the values NULL and '' (the empty string).

[NATIONAL] VARCHAR(M) [CHARACTER SET charset_name] [COLLATE collation_name]

A variable-length string. M represents the maximum column length in characters. The range of M is 0 to 65,535. The effective maximum length of a VARCHAR is subject to the maximum row size (65,535 bytes, which is shared among all columns) and the character set used. For example, utf8mb3 characters can require up to three bytes per character, so a VARCHAR column that uses the utf8mb3 character set can be declared to be a maximum of 21,844 characters. See Section 10.4.7, “Limits on Table Column Count and Row Size”.

MySQL stores VARCHAR values as a 1-byte or 2-byte length prefix plus data. The length prefix indicates the number of bytes in the value. A VARCHAR column uses one length byte if values require no more than 255 bytes, two length bytes if values may require more than 255 bytes.

VARCHAR is shorthand for CHARACTER VARYING. NATIONAL VARCHAR is the standard SQL way to define that a VARCHAR column should use some predefined character set. MySQL uses utf8mb3 as this predefined character set. Section 12.3.7, “The National Character Set”. NVARCHAR is shorthand for NATIONAL VARCHAR.

BINARY[(M)]

The BINARY type is similar to the CHAR type, but stores binary byte strings rather than nonbinary character strings. An optional length M represents the column length in bytes. If omitted, M defaults to 1.

VARBINARY(M)

The VARBINARY type is similar to the VARCHAR type, but stores binary byte strings rather than nonbinary character strings. M represents the maximum column length in bytes.

TINYBLOB

A BLOB column with a maximum length of 255 (2⁸ − 1) bytes. Each TINYBLOB value is stored using a 1-byte length prefix that indicates the number of bytes in the value.

TINYTEXT [CHARACTER SET charset_name] [COLLATE collation_name]

A TEXT column with a maximum length of 255 (2⁸ − 1) characters. The effective maximum length is less if the value contains multibyte characters. Each TINYTEXT value is stored using a 1-byte length prefix that indicates the number of bytes in the value.

BLOB[(M)]

A BLOB column with a maximum length of 65,535 (2¹⁶ − 1) bytes. Each BLOB value is stored using a 2-byte length prefix that indicates the number of bytes in the value.

An optional length M can be given for this type. If this is done, MySQL creates the column as the smallest BLOB type large enough to hold values M bytes long.

TEXT[(M)] [CHARACTER SET charset_name] [COLLATE collation_name]

A TEXT column with a maximum length of 65,535 (2¹⁶ − 1) characters. The effective maximum length is less if the value contains multibyte characters. Each TEXT value is stored using a 2-byte length prefix that indicates the number of bytes in the value.

An optional length M can be given for this type. If this is done, MySQL creates the column as the smallest TEXT type large enough to hold values M characters long.

MEDIUMBLOB

A BLOB column with a maximum length of 16,777,215 (2²⁴ − 1) bytes. Each MEDIUMBLOB value is stored using a 3-byte length prefix that indicates the number of bytes in the value.

MEDIUMTEXT [CHARACTER SET charset_name] [COLLATE collation_name]

A TEXT column with a maximum length of 16,777,215 (2²⁴ − 1) characters. The effective maximum length is less if the value contains multibyte characters. Each MEDIUMTEXT value is stored using a 3-byte length prefix that indicates the number of bytes in the value.

LONGBLOB

A BLOB column with a maximum length of 4,294,967,295 or 4GB (2³² − 1) bytes. The effective maximum length of LONGBLOB columns depends on the configured maximum packet size in the client/server protocol and available memory. Each LONGBLOB value is stored using a 4-byte length prefix that indicates the number of bytes in the value.

LONGTEXT [CHARACTER SET charset_name] [COLLATE collation_name]

A TEXT column with a maximum length of 4,294,967,295 or 4GB (2³² − 1) characters. The effective maximum length is less if the value contains multibyte characters. The effective maximum length of LONGTEXT columns also depends on the configured maximum packet size in the client/server protocol and available memory. Each LONGTEXT value is stored using a 4-byte length prefix that indicates the number of bytes in the value.

ENUM('value1','value2',...) [CHARACTER SET charset_name] [COLLATE collation_name]

An enumeration. A string object that can have only one value, chosen from the list of values 'value1', 'value2', ..., NULL or the special '' error value. ENUM values are represented internally as integers.

An ENUM column can have a maximum of 65,535 distinct elements.

The maximum supported length of an individual ENUM element is M <= 255 and (M x w) <= 1020, where M is the element literal length and w is the number of bytes required for the maximum-length character in the character set.

SET('value1','value2',...) [CHARACTER SET charset_name] [COLLATE collation_name]

A set. A string object that can have zero or more values, each of which must be chosen from the list of values 'value1', 'value2', ... SET values are represented internally as integers.

A SET column can have a maximum of 64 distinct members.

The maximum supported length of an individual SET element is M <= 255 and (M x w) <= 1020, where M is the element literal length and w is the number of bytes required for the maximum-length character in the character set.