mysql — The MySQL Command-Line Client • --binary-as-hex  enabled: •The  CHAR()  function has a  USING  charset  clause: •More generally, use  CONVERT()  to convert an expression to a given character set: • --binary-mode • --bind-address= ip_address • --character-sets-dir= dir_name The directory where character sets are installed. See Section 10.15, “Character Set Configuration” . On a computer having multiple network interfaces, use this option to select which interface to use for connecting to the MySQL server. This option helps when processing  mysqlbinlog  output that may contain  BLOB  values. By default, mysql  translates  \r
  in statement strings to   and interprets  \0  as the statement terminator.  -- binary-mode  disables both features. It also disables all  mysql  commands except  charset  and delimiter  in noninteractive mode (for input piped to  mysql  or loaded using the  source  command). To disable hexadecimal notation, use  --skip-binary-as-hex As of MySQL 8.0.19, when  mysql  operates in interactive mode, this option is enabled by default. In addition, output from the  status  (or  \s ) command includes this line when the option is enabled implicitly or explicitly: To write a binary string expression so that it displays as a character string regardless of whether  -- binary-as-hex  is enabled, use these techniques: mysql>  SELECT CHAR(0x41), UNHEX(’41’); mysql>  SELECT CHAR(0x41), UNHEX(’41’); mysql>  SELECT CHAR(0x41 USING utf8mb4); +--------------------------+ | CHAR(0x41 USING utf8mb4) | +--------------------------+ | A | +--------------------------+ mysql>  SELECT CONVERT(UNHEX(’41’) USING utf8mb4); +------------------------------------+ | CONVERT(UNHEX(’41’) USING utf8mb4) | +------------------------------------+ | A | +------------------------------------+ Binary data as: Hexadecimal +------------+-------------+ | CHAR(0x41) | UNHEX(’41’) | +------------+-------------+ | A | A | +------------+-------------+ +------------------------+--------------------------+ | CHAR(0x41) | UNHEX(’41’) | +------------------------+--------------------------+ | 0x41 | 0x41 | +------------------------+--------------------------+ 421