I'm trying to understand when I'm supposed to set/force default-character-set for the client.
The documentation states:
You can force client programs to use specific character set as follows:
[client] default-character-set=charset_name
This is normally unnecessary. However, when character_set_system differs from character_set_server or character_set_client, and you input characters manually (as database object identifiers, column values, or both), these may be displayed incorrectly in output from the client or the output itself may be formatted incorrectly. In such cases, starting the mysql client with --default-character-set=system_character_set—that is, setting the client character set to match the system character set—should fix the problem.
Let's assume charater_set_system and character_set_server are different.
My first question:
I suppose that when I'm importing an export files generated by mysqldump the variable default-character-set has no effect as set names is always issued at the very beginning of the export file. Am I right or there could be corner cases?
The second question:
What about manually running sql scripts? The documentations states that some characters may be displayed incorrectly. How can I be sure that the data is imported correctly (a part from running an application test i.e. by trial and error)?