MySQL in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition

Name

CONVERT()

Synopsis

CONVERT([_character_set]string USING character_set)

Use this function to convert the character set of a given string to another character set specified with the USING keyword. This function is available as of version 4.0.2 of MySQL. The function has some similarities to CAST(). If the character set for the given string is not the same as the default, you can specify its character set by listing it immediately before the string and preceded by an underscore:

UPDATE students SET name_first =
CONVERT(_latin1'Rosá' USING utf8)
WHERE student_id = 433342000;

In this example, we’re converting the student’s first name with the accented character into a format usable by the column that uses UTF-8. Notice that the character set given for the string is preceded by an underscore and there are no spaces before the quotation mark for the string.