title: How do I convert a column to ASCII on the fly without saving to check for matches with an external ASCII string?
body: <p>I have a member search function where you can give parts of names and the return should be all members having at least one of username, firstname or lastname matching that input. The problem here is that some names have 'weird' characters like the <code>é</code> in <code>Renée</code> and the user doesn't wanna type the weird character but the normal ASCII substitute <code>e</code>.</p>
  
  <p>In PHP I convert the input string to ASCII using iconv (just in case someone types weird characters). In the database however I should also convert the weird chars to ASCII (obviously) for the strings to match.</p>
  
  <p>I tried the following:</p>
  
  <pre><code>SELECT
    CONVERT(_latin1'Renée' USING ascii) t1, 
    CAST(_latin1'Renée' AS CHAR CHARACTER SET ASCII) t2;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>(That's two tries.) Both don't work. Both have <code>Ren?e</code> as output. The question mark should be an <code>e</code>. It's alright if it outputs <code>Ren?ee</code> since I can just remove all question marks after the convert.</p>
  
  <p>As you can imagine, the columns I want to query are encoded Latin1.</p>
  
  <p>Thanks.</p>