13.7.5.4 SHOW COLLATION Statement

SHOW COLLATION
    [LIKE 'pattern' | WHERE expr]

This statement lists collations supported by the server. By default, the output from SHOW COLLATION includes all available collations. The LIKE clause, if present, indicates which collation names to match. The WHERE clause can be given to select rows using more general conditions, as discussed in Section 24.8, “Extensions to SHOW Statements”. For example:

mysql> SHOW COLLATION WHERE Charset = 'latin1';
+-------------------+---------+----+---------+----------+---------+
| Collation         | Charset | Id | Default | Compiled | Sortlen |
+-------------------+---------+----+---------+----------+---------+
| latin1_german1_ci | latin1  |  5 |         | Yes      |       1 |
| latin1_swedish_ci | latin1  |  8 | Yes     | Yes      |       1 |
| latin1_danish_ci  | latin1  | 15 |         | Yes      |       1 |
| latin1_german2_ci | latin1  | 31 |         | Yes      |       2 |
| latin1_bin        | latin1  | 47 |         | Yes      |       1 |
| latin1_general_ci | latin1  | 48 |         | Yes      |       1 |
| latin1_general_cs | latin1  | 49 |         | Yes      |       1 |
| latin1_spanish_ci | latin1  | 94 |         | Yes      |       1 |
+-------------------+---------+----+---------+----------+---------+

SHOW COLLATION output has these columns:

Collation

The collation name.
Charset

The name of the character set with which the collation is associated.
Id

The collation ID.
Default

Whether the collation is the default for its character set.
Compiled

Whether the character set is compiled into the server.
Sortlen

This is related to the amount of memory required to sort strings expressed in the character set.

To see the default collation for each character set, use the following statement. Default is a reserved word, so to use it as an identifier, it must be quoted as such:

mysql> SHOW COLLATION WHERE `Default` = 'Yes';
+---------------------+----------+----+---------+----------+---------+
| Collation           | Charset  | Id | Default | Compiled | Sortlen |
+---------------------+----------+----+---------+----------+---------+
| big5_chinese_ci     | big5     |  1 | Yes     | Yes      |       1 |
| dec8_swedish_ci     | dec8     |  3 | Yes     | Yes      |       1 |
| cp850_general_ci    | cp850    |  4 | Yes     | Yes      |       1 |
| hp8_english_ci      | hp8      |  6 | Yes     | Yes      |       1 |
| koi8r_general_ci    | koi8r    |  7 | Yes     | Yes      |       1 |
| latin1_swedish_ci   | latin1   |  8 | Yes     | Yes      |       1 |
...

Collation information is also available from the INFORMATION_SCHEMA COLLATIONS table. See Section 24.3.3, “The INFORMATION_SCHEMA COLLATIONS Table”.