可以看到，随着通过 set names 修改 character_set_connection、collation_connection 值，date_format() 函数返回结果的字符集也
帮同事处理一个sql（简化过后的）执行报错：
mysql> select date_format('2013-11-19','y-m-d') > timediff('2013-11-19', '2013-11-20');error 1267 (hy000): illegal mix of collations (utf8_general_ci,coercible) and (latin1_swedish_ci,numeric) for operation '>'乍一看挺莫名其妙的，查了下手册，，发现有这么一段：
the language used for day and month names and abbreviations is controlled by the value of the lc_time_names system variable (section 9.7, “mysql server locale support”).the date_format() returns a string with a character set and collation given by character_set_connection and collation_connection so that it can return month and weekday names containing non-ascii characters.也就是说，date_formate() 函数返回的结果是带有字符集/校验集属性的，而 timediff() 函数则没有字符集/校验集属性，我们来验证一下：
mysql> set names utf8;mysql> select charset(date_format('2013-11-19','y-m-d')), charset(timediff('2013-11-19', '2013-11-20'));+--------------------------------------------+-----------------------------------------------+| charset(date_format('2013-11-19','y-m-d')) | charset(timediff('2013-11-19', '2013-11-20')) |+--------------------------------------------+-----------------------------------------------+| utf8| binary|+--------------------------------------------+-----------------------------------------------+mysql> set names gb2312;mysql> select charset(date_format('2013-11-19','y-m-d')), charset(timediff('2013-11-19', '2013-11-20'));+--------------------------------------------+-----------------------------------------------+| charset(date_format('2013-11-19','y-m-d')) | charset(timediff('2013-11-19', '2013-11-20')) |+--------------------------------------------+-----------------------------------------------+| gb2312| binary|+--------------------------------------------+-----------------------------------------------+可以看到，随着通过 set names 修改 character_set_connection、collation_connection 值，date_format() 函数返回结果的字符集也跟着不一样。在这种情况下，想要正常工作，就需要将结果进行一次字符集转换，例如：
mysql> select date_format('2013-11-19','y-m-d') > convert(timediff('2013-11-19', '2013-11-20') using utf8);+----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+| date_format('2013-11-19','y-m-d') > convert(timediff('2013-11-19', '2013-11-20') using utf8) |+----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+|1 |+----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+就可以了
p.s，mysql的版本：5.5.20-55-log percona server (gpl), release rel24.1, revision 217