# Foreign characters from MySQL Database

**URL:** <https://forum.kirupa.com/t/foreign-characters-from-mysql-database/236922>\
**Category:** programming\
**Created:** [August 24, 2007, 11:51pm UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/foreign-characters-from-mysql-database/236922 "2007-08-24T23:51:19Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![toolofthesystem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/919ad9/32.png) [@toolofthesystem](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/toolofthesystem)\
**Post date:** [August 24, 2007, 11:51pm UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/foreign-characters-from-mysql-database/236922/1 "2007-08-24T23:51:19Z")

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I’m having some issues with trying to pull some information out of a mySQL database that has a latin1 character set but somehow manages to retain foreign characters. In PHPMyAdmin they show up as messed up text, but at least it’s something. However, when pulling this onto a PHP script I wrote, it will pull question marks to replace the characters that are not ASCII. I am trying to figure out how to edit the query so that it will not return question marks since CONVERT() and CAST() are not working.