Warren Young a écrit : > > I think what you mean to ask is, can you run the mysql command line tool > in a different character set than the system default, so that when it > prints out text, it goes to the terminal with the correct character set. > The answer is, yes: > > $ LANG=fr_FR mysql -uDBUSER -p.... Thanks for your reply! Your suggestion solved the problem partially. When I create tables manually and fill them manually, french characters get displayed correctly. Example: mysql> select * from pet; +----------+---------+---------+------+------------+------------+ | name | owner | species | sex | birth | death | +----------+---------+---------+------+------------+------------+ | Fluffy | Harold | cat | f | 1993-02-04 | NULL | | Claws | Gwen | cat | m | 1994-03-17 | NULL | | Whistler | Gwen | bird | NULL | 1997-12-09 | NULL | | Bowser | Diane | dog | m | 1979-08-31 | 1995-07-29 | | Bamboù | Jérôme | dog | m | 1999-01-20 | NULL | | Diégo | Héloïse | cat | m | 1998-01-21 | NULL | </snip> But when I try, for example, to restore a database from a latin1-encoded dumpfile, it results in a loss of all my special chars, e. g. "Hélène" becomes "Hlne", "Marylène" becomes "Marylne", and so on. Any idea how this could work?