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Asked: 2026-06-03T21:46:49+00:00

I use MySQL 5.1 and loaded from a UTF-8 decoded txt-file about 2.7 mil

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I use MySQL 5.1 and loaded from a UTF-8 decoded txt-file about 2.7 mil lines into a table which itself is declared as utf8_unicode_ci and as well all char-fields are declared as utf8_unicode_ci, using LOAD DATA INFILE…

In the database itself the characters all seem to be correct, everything looks nice. However, when I print them using php, the characters show up as ???, although I use utf-8 declaration in the HTML head:

<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
...

In another table (using utf-8), where I inserted text from a submitted form, the characters appear strangely in the database, but are shown correctly again, when I print them using SELECT....

So, I was wondering: what is wrong? Are UTF-8 chars shown correctly in the database or strangely but when you SELECT them again they are OK? Or where is the problem (when loading the file into the db, in the HTML or somewhere in between)??

Thank you very much for any hint or suggestion! 🙂

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Note: MySQL’s utf8 charset is limited, it only supports Unicode characters in the BMP that take up no more than three bytes. You should be using utf8mb4 instead.

    • Make sure you send the SET NAMES utf8 SET NAMES utf8mb4 command to MySQL after connecting, before running any MySQL queries.
    • Make sure your page is actually rendered as utf-8 (if there’s an HTTP header Content-Type: text/html;charset=iso-8859-1, browsers disagree about which should win).
    • Read this article: Handling Unicode Front To Back In A Web App (but remember to replace utf8 with utf8mb4 where MySQL is concerned).

    If phpMyAdmin displays your entered data as correct Unicode text, then my bet is that you are not doing SET NAMES utf8 after connecting.

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