MySQL Bugs: #29576: It's not possible to set charset before connecting

Bug #29576	It's not possible to set charset before connecting - crash
Submitted:	5 Jul 2007 15:15	Modified:	9 Jul 2007 6:21
Reporter:	Andrey Hristov	Email Updates:
Status:	Not a Bug	Impact on me:	None
Category:	MySQL Server: C API (client library)	Severity:	S2 (Serious)
Version:	4.1+	OS:	Any
Assigned to:	Ramil Kalimullin	CPU Architecture:	Any

Description:
It's not possible to set charset of a MYSQL handle before connecting. It makes impossible then to connect to a MySQL server with anything but the default charset. In my case I can't authenticate to with username in cyrillic encoded with utf8 like : тествам

MYSQL mysql;

mysql_init(&mysql);
mysql_set_character_set(&mysql, "utf8"); <-- segfault
mysql_real_connect(&mysql, "127.0.0.1", "тествам", "парола", "тест", 3306, NULL, CLIENT_MULTI_RESULTS);

How to repeat:
See above

Thank you for the bug report.

Hi Andrey!

You are not allowed to call the mysql_set_character_set() function 
*before* the mysql_real_connect(). The purpose of the function
is to tune the current connection, see

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/mysql-set-character-set.html
"This function is used to set the default character set for the current connection."

and

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/mysql-real-connect.html
"... mysql_real_connect() must complete successfully before you can execute any other API functions that require a valid MYSQL connection handle structure".

You can use the mysql_options() to set some connect options 
(note: MYSQL_INIT_COMMAND and MYSQL_SET_CHARSET_NAME), see

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/mysql-options.html
"Can be used to set extra connect options and affect behavior for a connection. This function may be called multiple times to set several options.
mysql_options() should be called after mysql_init() and before mysql_connect() or mysql_real_connect()".

Regards,
Ramil.

Reflection on Bug#29853:
What we have here is more of a general problem. Maybe we should note the problem  with characters outside BMP and with 7bit encodings in the manual?