Cannot create NVARCHAR column in MariaDb/Mysql

Question

I'm using MariaDb server (Ver 15.1 Distrib 10.2.7-MariaDB). When I execute

CREATE TABLE `my_table` (
   `id` INT NOT NULL,
   `name` NVARCHAR(64) NULL,
   PRIMARY KEY (`id`)
);

Describe output:

MariaDB [db]> describe my_table;
+-------+-------------+------+-----+---------+-------+
| Field | Type        | Null | Key | Default | Extra |
+-------+-------------+------+-----+---------+-------+
| id    | int(11)     | NO   | PRI | NULL    |       |
| name  | varchar(64) | YES  |     | NULL    |       |
+-------+-------------+------+-----+---------+-------+
2 rows in set (0.00 sec)

Why there is no error, and "name" column datatype is varchar (not nvarchar)?

db schema details:

Default collation: utf8_general_ci
Default characterset: utf8

Maybe this part of the documentation helps: NATIONAL VARCHAR is the standard SQL way to define that a VARCHAR column should use some predefined character set. MariaDB uses utf8 as this predefined character set, as does MySQL 4.1 and up — Jens
– Jens, Commented Aug 16, 2017 at 8:13
@Jens - you literally beat me to it by 60 seconds. This is, IMHO, the "correct answer". — wally
– wally, Commented Aug 16, 2017 at 8:16
@Jens - The default continued to be latin1 for many versions. Finally, in 8.0, the default became utf8mb4. — Rick James
– Rick James, Commented Mar 6, 2019 at 3:30

Rick James · Accepted Answer · 2017-08-20 19:58:03Z

6

NVARCHAR is a synonym for VARCHAR in MySQL/MariaDB. But you need to add the CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 to be sure that you get full UTF-8 support.

What you show as the default for that database is only the subset, called 'utf8'. It will not handle Emoji or some of Chinese.

answered Aug 20, 2017 at 19:58

Rick James

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