The server cannot complete a collation comparison because it failed to reset weight levels before a tertiary ignorable Unicode character.
MySQL Error 87: EE_FAILED_TO_RESET_BEFORE_TERTIARY_IGNORABLE_CHAR occurs when the server hits a collation bug while comparing or sorting Unicode text. Upgrade to a fixed 8.0.x release or switch the column to a stable utf8mb4 collation to eliminate the failure.
Failed to reset before a tertiary ignorable character %s. EE_FAILED_TO_RESET_BEFORE_TERTIARY_IGNORABLE_CHAR was added in 8.0.13.
The error is raised by MySQL’s ICU-based collations when the comparison engine cannot reset weight levels before meeting a tertiary ignorable Unicode character such as variation selectors or some punctuation. MySQL aborts the statement and returns error code 87 instead of producing possibly incorrect sort results.
The condition was introduced in MySQL 8.0.13 together with the 0900 UCA collations.
It can surface during SELECT, ORDER BY, GROUP BY, DISTINCT, CREATE INDEX, or ALTER TABLE operations that touch affected character columns.
The message most often shows up on servers using utf8mb4uca_0900asci or utf8mb4uca_0900aici collations while processing data that contains zero-width joiners, variation selectors, or malformed UTF-8 sequences.
It may also fire during replication if a downstream replica runs an older patch level.
The failure aborts the running statement, rolls back open transactions, and can break replication. Ignoring it leaves queries unreliable and indexes unusable. Production systems risk downtime until the root cause is removed.
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Several patch levels shipped with a defect that mishandled tertiary ignorable weights, triggering the reset failure during comparisons.
The 0900 collations rely on newer UCA rules.
Edge Unicode code points introduced inconsistencies that expose the error.
Illegal bytes stored before migrations confuse the comparator, causing it to mis-reset and throw the error.
If the server links to a different ICU minor than the one it was compiled with, internal weight tables may mismatch and fail.
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No data is corrupted. MySQL aborts the statement before writing inconsistent results.
No. The failure is fatal and cannot be masked by changing SQL_MODE. A fix or workaround is required.
Yes. Galaxy’s AI copilot surfaces server errors instantly and suggests collation fixes, reducing diagnosis time.
Changing collation may reorder text. Always back up and test in staging before altering production schemas.
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