mySQLdb versus platform problem

[John Nagle]

Robin Becker wrote:
> John Nagle wrote:
> 
>> Try:
>>
>>     db=MySQLdb.connect(host='appx',db='sc_0',user='user',passwd='secret',
>>     use_unicode=True, charset = "utf8")
>>
>> The distinction is that "use_unicode" tells Python to convert to Unicode,
>> but Python doesn't know the MySQL table type.  'charset="utf8"' tells
>> MySQL to do the conversion to UTF8, which can be reliably converted
>> to Unicode.
>>
>>                     John Nagle
>>
>> .......
> 
> 
> OK that seems to help. However, my database has tables with different 
> encodings. Does MySQLdb ignore the table encoding? That would be a bit 
> lame.

    MySQLdb, the client, doesn't know the table encoding.  The
server end does.

> Also it still doesn't  explain the different behaviours between unix & 
> win32 (or perhaps different defaults are somehow magically decided upon).

    The default encoding is an environment thing.  It comes, somehow, from
the locale your system thinks it is in.

> -things were so much easier when bytes were bytes-ly yrs-
> Robin Becker

    So convert the database to Unicode/UTF-8 and have everything
be consistent.  MySQL 5 can do that dynamically with an ALTER
TABLE statement.

					John Nagle