
        
        
            
                
                
                    SELECT BINARY expression;
CAST(expression AS BINARY);
CONVERT(expression USING BINARY);

Examples

Basic usage

To convert 'cherry' to a binary string:


        
        
            
                
                
                    SELECT BINARY 'cherry';
                
            
            +----------------------------------+
| BINARY 'cherry'                  |
+----------------------------------+
| 0x636865727279                   |
+----------------------------------+

'cherry' is converted to a binary string represented as '636865727279' in hexadecimal notation.

Byte by byte comparison

To perform byte by byte comparison between two strings:


        
        
            
                
                
                    SELECT BINARY 'skytowner' = 'SKYTOWNER';
                
            
            +----------------------------------+
| BINARY 'skytowner' = 'SKYTOWNER' |
+----------------------------------+
|                                0 |
+----------------------------------+

Using the BINARY operator we are able to perform byte by byte comparison of the two strings rather than a character by character comparison. As 's' and 'S' have different byte values (same applies for 'k' and 'K', 'y' and 'Y' etc) we return 0 (false).

If we had performed a character by character comparison instead:


        
        
            
                
                
                    SELECT 'skytowner' = 'SKYTOWNER';
                
            
            +---------------------------+
| 'skytowner' = 'SKYTOWNER' |
+---------------------------+
|                         1 |
+---------------------------+

The two strings are recognized as being equal (as default collation of utf8mb4_0900_ai_ci is case insensitive).

Published by Arthur Yanagisawa

Edited by 0 others

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Official MySQL Documentation

https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/8.0/en/cast-functions.html#operator_binary

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