Creating mysql table with explicit default character set, what if I don't?

Question

In mysql 5.x Whats the difference if I do something like this:

CREATE TABLE aTable (     id                       BIGINT NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY,     aNumber          bigint(20) DEFAULT NULL ) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARACTER SET=utf8; 

with this:

CREATE TABLE aTable (    id                       BIGINT NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY,    aNumber            bigint(20) DEFAULT NULL ) ENGINE=InnoDB CHARACTER SET=utf8; 

Notice I am not specifying the character set as default in the first one. I couldn't find anything in the mysql docs.

Answer 1

The word DEFAULT is optional there - so the two are equivalent, i.e. they set the default character set for the table.

See the MySQL documentation for CREATE TABLE. Here's the relevant bit:

table_option:     ENGINE [=] engine_name   ... other options ...   | [DEFAULT] CHARACTER SET [=] charset_name   ... more options ... 

You can confirm this using the SHOW CREATE TABLE command.