MySQL中DATE_FORMATE函数使用时的注意点

今天帮同事处理一个sql（简化过后的）执行报错：

mysql> select date_format('2013-11-19','y-m-d') > timediff('2013-11-19', '2013-11-20');                     

error 1267 (hy000): illegal mix of collations (utf8_general_ci,coercible) and (latin1_swedish_ci,numeric) for operation '>'

乍一看挺莫名其妙的，查了下手册，发现有这么一段：

the language used for day and month names and abbreviations is controlled by the value of the lc_time_names system variable (section 9.7, “mysql server locale support”).

the date_format() returns a string with a character set and collation given by character_set_connection and collation_connection so that it can return month and weekday names containing non-ascii characters.

也就是说，date_formate() 函数返回的结果是带有字符集/校验集属性的，而 timediff() 函数则没有字符集/校验集属性，我们来验证一下：

mysql> set names utf8;
mysql> select charset(date_format('2013-11-19','y-m-d')), charset(timediff('2013-11-19', '2013-11-20'));
+--------------------------------------------+-----------------------------------------------+
| charset(date_format('2013-11-19','y-m-d')) | charset(timediff('2013-11-19', '2013-11-20')) |
+--------------------------------------------+-----------------------------------------------+
| utf8                    | binary                    |
+--------------------------------------------+-----------------------------------------------+

mysql> set names gb2312;
mysql> select charset(date_format('2013-11-19','y-m-d')), charset(timediff('2013-11-19', '2013-11-20'));
+--------------------------------------------+-----------------------------------------------+
| charset(date_format('2013-11-19','y-m-d')) | charset(timediff('2013-11-19', '2013-11-20')) |
+--------------------------------------------+-----------------------------------------------+
| gb2312                   | binary                    |
+--------------------------------------------+-----------------------------------------------+

可以看到，随着通过 set names 修改 character_set_connection、collation_connection  值，date_format() 函数返回结果的字符集也跟着不一样。在这种情况下，想要正常工作，就需要将结果进行一次字符集转换，例如：

mysql> select date_format('2013-11-19','y-m-d') > convert(timediff('2013-11-19', '2013-11-20') using utf8);
+----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| date_format('2013-11-19','y-m-d') > convert(timediff('2013-11-19', '2013-11-20') using utf8) |
+----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|                                              1 |
+----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

就可以了 :)