MySQL Bugs: #7616: mysql client display problem with UTF8

Bug #7616	mysql client display problem with UTF8
Submitted:	2 Jan 2005 11:50	Modified:	11 Jan 2005 15:20
Reporter:	Thomas Zehetbauer	Email Updates:
Status:	Not a Bug	Impact on me:	None
Category:	MySQL Server: Command-line Clients	Severity:	S3 (Non-critical)
Version:	4.1.8	OS:	Linux (Linux/Fedora Core 3)
Assigned to:	Alexander Barkov	CPU Architecture:	Any

Description:
mysql client seemingly uses the byte length to calculate the column width, with UTF8 this causes columns to get shortened for every umlaut.

How to repeat:
 create table test (a text);
insert into test values ('aaa');
insert into test values ('aaä');
insert into test values ('aää');
insert into test values ('äää');
select * from test;

+--------+
| a      |
+--------+
| aaa    |
| aaä   |
| aää  |
| äää |
+--------+

I tested on Slackware with BK source and looks it is terminal issue
at your side:

mysql>  create table test (a text);
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)

mysql> insert into test values ('aaa');
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.01 sec)

mysql> insert into test values ('aaä');
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)

mysql> insert into test values ('aää');
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)

mysql> insert into test values ('äää');
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)

mysql> select * from test;
+------+
| a    |
+------+
| aaa  |
| aaä  |
| aää  |
| äää  |
+------+
4 rows in set (0.00 sec)

mysql> select version();
+-----------------+
| version()       |
+-----------------+
| 4.1.9-debug-log |
+-----------------+
1 row in set (0.04 sec)

mysql> 

Please verify if you get warnings in the offended inserts and
do: show warnings.

Thanks in advance.

Here is the hexadecimal dump of the output:

0000000: 2b2d 2d2d 2d2d 2d2d 2d2b 0a7c 2061 2020  +--------+.| a
0000010: 2020 2020 7c0a 2b2d 2d2d 2d2d 2d2d 2d2b      |.+--------+
0000020: 0a7c 2061 6161 2020 2020 7c0a 7c20 6161  .| aaa    |.| aa
0000030: c3a4 2020 207c 0a7c 2061 c3a4 c3a4 2020  ..   |.| a....
0000040: 7c0a 7c20 c3a4 c3a4 c3a4 207c 0a2b 2d2d  |.| ...... |.+--
0000050: 2d2d 2d2d 2d2d 2b0a                      ------+.

Note that 61 is normal 'a' and c3 a4 is umlaut a which are both only one character.

I got the same output in case of UTF8 terminal. Slackware by default uses 8-bit terminal.

Thank you for taking the time to write to us, but this is not
a bug. Please double-check the documentation available at
http://www.mysql.com/documentation/ and the instructions on
how to report a bug at http://bugs.mysql.com/how-to-report.php

Additional info:

You need to run mysql with --default-character-set=utf8 in order to get 
a nice looking output:

$mysql --default-character-set=utf8 test
Welcome to the MySQL monitor.  Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MySQL connection id is 6 to server version: 4.1.9-debug-log

Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the buffer.

mysql> select * from test;
+--------+
| a      |
+--------+
| aaa    |
| aaä    |
| aää    |
| äää    |
+--------+
4 rows in set (0.00 sec)