How to store file paths, which collation to use?
Not until MySQL 8.0 is there a "case-insensitive, accent-sensitive" collation:

mysql&gt; set names utf8mb4 collate utf8mb4_0900_as_ci;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)

mysql&gt; select 'a'='A', "a" = "à" ;
+---------+------------+
| 'a'='A' | "a" = "à"  |
+---------+------------+
|       1 |          0 |
+---------+------------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)