Hello, currently i have FTP access to a web hosting account, i also have mysql credentials. My aim is to export mysql database so i am using php function: <?php exec('mysqldump --user=*** --password=*** --host=*** dbnamehere -r exp.sql'); ?> that does not create any file, but when used: > exp.sql it create file but with damaged special characters. By special characters i mean: ěščřžýáíé and similar. By damaged i mean replaced by ? or other strange chars. The resulting dump and the table with damaged chars contains among other: /*!40101 SET character_set_client = utf8 */; ) ENGINE=InnoDB AUTO_INCREMENT=348 DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8; i tried to add this switch to mysqldump: --default-character-set=latin1 --default-character-set=utf-8 but still damaged chars. which command to run please to have working dump? UPDATE: i see that the command mentioned above somehow worked and created file. Even the file had wrong characters in it, i downloaded it via web browser and imported other hosting account mysql via PHPMyAdmin (left encoding set to UTF-8 on PHPMyAdmin Import tab. and it imported it successfully and seems no problem with chatractes. So this topic seems SOLVED, unless someone have an advice for future dumps.
I'm guessing the file itself doesn't have wrong characters, but whatever you're using to view the file isn't using UTF-8 as default character set, hence the ? replacement. Or your environment isn't set up using UTF-8.