An enumeration value must be a quoted string literal. For example, you can create a table with an ENUM column like this:

CREATE TABLE shirts (
    name VARCHAR(40),
    size ENUM('x-small', 'small', 'medium', 'large', 'x-large')
);
INSERT INTO shirts (name, size) VALUES ('dress shirt','large'), ('t-shirt','medium'),
  ('polo shirt','small');
SELECT name, size FROM shirts WHERE size = 'medium';
+---------+--------+
| name    | size   |
+---------+--------+
| t-shirt | medium |
+---------+--------+
UPDATE shirts SET size = 'small' WHERE size = 'large';
COMMIT;

Inserting 1 million rows into this table with a value of 'medium' would require 1 million bytes of storage, as opposed to 6 million bytes if you stored the actual string 'medium' in a VARCHAR column.

Each enumeration value has an index:

For example, a column specified as ENUM('Mercury', 'Venus', 'Earth') can have any of the values shown here. The index of each value is also shown.

An ENUM column can have a maximum of 65,535 distinct elements.

If you retrieve an ENUM value in a numeric context, the column value's index is returned. For example, you can retrieve numeric values from an ENUM column like this:

mysql> SELECT enum_col+0 FROM tbl_name;

Functions such as SUM() or AVG() that expect a numeric argument cast the argument to a number if necessary. For ENUM values, the index number is used in the calculation.

Trailing spaces are automatically deleted from ENUM member values in the table definition when a table is created.

When retrieved, values stored into an ENUM column are displayed using the lettercase that was used in the column definition. Note that ENUM columns can be assigned a character set and collation. For binary or case-sensitive collations, lettercase is taken into account when assigning values to the column.

If you store a number into an ENUM column, the number is treated as the index into the possible values, and the value stored is the enumeration member with that index. (However, this does not work with LOAD DATA, which treats all input as strings.) If the numeric value is quoted, it is still interpreted as an index if there is no matching string in the list of enumeration values. For these reasons, it is not advisable to define an ENUM column with enumeration values that look like numbers, because this can easily become confusing. For example, the following column has enumeration members with string values of '0', '1', and '2', but numeric index values of 1, 2, and 3:

numbers ENUM('0','1','2')

If you store 2, it is interpreted as an index value, and becomes '1' (the value with index 2). If you store '2', it matches an enumeration value, so it is stored as '2'. If you store '3', it does not match any enumeration value, so it is treated as an index and becomes '2' (the value with index 3).

mysql> INSERT INTO t (numbers) VALUES(2),('2'),('3');
mysql> SELECT * FROM t;
+---------+
| numbers |
+---------+
| 1       |
| 2       |
| 2       |
+---------+

To determine all possible values for an ENUM column, use SHOW COLUMNS FROM tbl_name LIKE 'enum_col' and parse the ENUM definition in the Type column of the output.

In the C API, ENUM values are returned as strings. For information about using result set metadata to distinguish them from other strings, see C API Basic Data Structures.

An enumeration value can also be the empty string ('') or NULL under certain circumstances:

ENUM values are sorted based on their index numbers, which depend on the order in which the enumeration members were listed in the column specification. For example, 'b' sorts before 'a' for ENUM('b', 'a'). The empty string sorts before nonempty strings, and NULL values sort before all other enumeration values.

To prevent unexpected results when using the ORDER BY clause on an ENUM column, use one of these techniques:

An enumeration value cannot be an expression, even one that evaluates to a string value.

For example, this CREATE TABLE statement does not work because the CONCAT function cannot be used to construct an enumeration value:

CREATE TABLE sizes (
    size ENUM('small', CONCAT('med','ium'), 'large')
);

You also cannot employ a user variable as an enumeration value. This pair of statements do not work:

SET @mysize = 'medium';

CREATE TABLE sizes (
    size ENUM('small', @mysize, 'large')
);

We strongly recommend that you do not use numbers as enumeration values, because it does not save on storage over the appropriate TINYINT or SMALLINT type, and it is easy to mix up the strings and the underlying number values (which might not be the same) if you quote the ENUM values incorrectly. If you do use a number as an enumeration value, always enclose it in quotation marks. If the quotation marks are omitted, the number is regarded as an index. See Handling of Enumeration Literals to see how even a quoted number could be mistakenly used as a numeric index value.

Duplicate values in the definition cause a warning, or an error if strict SQL mode is enabled.