

This section describes problems that can occur when using YEAR(2) and provides information about converting existing YEAR(2) columns to YEAR(4).

Although the internal range of values for YEAR(4) and YEAR(2) is the same (1901 to 2155, and 0000), the display width for YEAR(2) makes that type inherently ambiguous because displayed values indicate only the last two digits of the internal values and omit the century digits. The result can be a loss of information under certain circumstances. For this reason, consider avoiding YEAR(2) throughout your applications and using YEAR(4) wherever you need a YEAR data type. Note that conversion will become necessary at some point because support for YEAR data types with display values other than 4, most notably YEAR(2), is reduced as of MySQL 5.6.6 and will be removed entirely in a future release.

YEAR(2) Limitations

Issues with the YEAR(2) data type include ambiguity of displayed values, and possible loss of information when values are dumped and reloaded or converted to strings.

To avoid these problems, use YEAR(4) rather than YEAR(2). Suggestions regarding migration strategies appear later in this section.

Migrating from YEAR(2) to YEAR(4)

To convert YEAR(2) columns to YEAR(4), use ALTER TABLE. Suppose that a table t1 has this definition:


Modify the column using ALTER TABLE as follows. Remember to include any column attributes such as NOT NULL or DEFAULT:


The ALTER TABLE statement converts the table without changing YEAR(2) values. If the server is a replication master, the ALTER TABLE statement replicates to slaves and makes the corresponding table change on each one.

One migration method should be avoided: Do not dump your data with mysqldump and reload the dump file after upgrading. This has the potential to change YEAR(2) values, as described previously.

A migration from YEAR(2) to YEAR(4) should also involve examining application code for the possibility of changed behavior under conditions such as these: