The BINARY and VARBINARY data types are distinct from the CHAR BINARY and VARCHAR BINARY data types. For the latter types, the BINARY attribute does not cause the column to be treated as a binary string column. Instead, it causes the binary (_bin) collation for the column character set (or the table default character set if no column character set is specified) to be used, and the column itself stores nonbinary character strings rather than binary byte strings. For example, if the default character set is utf8mb4, CHAR(5) BINARY is treated as CHAR(5) CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_bin. This differs from BINARY(5), which stores 5-byte binary strings that have the binary character set and collation. For information about the differences between the binary collation of the binary character set and the _bin collations of nonbinary character sets, see Section 10.8.5, “The binary Collation Compared to _bin Collations”.

Nonbinary strings (as stored using the CHAR, VARCHAR, and TEXT data types) have a character set and collation other than binary. A given nonbinary character set can have several collations, each of which defines a particular comparison and sort order for the characters in the set. For most character sets, one of these is the binary collation, indicated by a _bin suffix in the collation name. For example, the binary collation for utf8 and latin1 is named utf8_bin and latin1_bin, respectively. utf8mb4 is an exception that has two binary collations, utf8mb4_bin and utf8mb4_0900_bin; see Section 10.10.1, “Unicode Character Sets”.