MySQL binary against non-binary for hash IDs

Question

Assuming that I want to use a hash as an ID instead of a numeric. Would it be an performance advantage to store them as BINARY over non-binary?

CREA         


        

Answer 1

From the manual:

The BINARY and VARBINARY types are similar to CHAR and VARCHAR, except
that they contain binary strings rather than non-binary strings. That is,
they contain byte strings rather than character strings. This means that
they have no character set, and sorting and comparison are based on the
numeric values of the bytes in the values. 

Since CHAR(32) BINARY causes a BINARY(32) column to be created under the hood, the benefit is that it will take less time to sort by that column, and probably less time to find corresponding rows if the column is indexed.