How can I make SQL case sensitive string comparison on MySQL?

Question

I have a function that returns five characters with mixed case. If I do a query on this string it will return the value regardless of case.

How can I make MySQL stri

Answer 1

Following is for MySQL versions equal to or higher than 5.5.

Add to /etc/mysql/my.cnf

  [mysqld]
  ...
  character-set-server=utf8
  collation-server=utf8_bin
  ...

All other collations I tried seemed to be case-insensitive, only "utf8_bin" worked.

Do not forget to restart mysql after this:

   sudo service mysql restart

According to http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/case-sensitivity.html there is also a "latin1_bin".

The "utf8_general_cs" was not accepted by mysql startup. (I read "_cs" as "case-sensitive" - ???).