What is the purpose of the convert function in MySQL?

The CONVERT function in MySQL is used to convert data between different character sets. It allows an expression to be converted from one character set to another. This is commonly used to convert strings from one character set to another in order to properly handle and store data in specific character sets.

The syntax of the CONVERT function is as follows:

Change the data type of the ‘expr’ expression using the specified transcoding method.

In this case, `expr` refers to the expression to be converted and `transcoding_name` refers to the character set to be converted to. During the conversion process, MySQL will automatically handle the conversion of specific characters based on the differences between character sets.