wp-includes/class-wpdb.php:917Sets the connection's character set.
$dbhmysqli$charsetstringoptionalnull$collatestringoptionalnull public function set_charset( $dbh, $charset = null, $collate = null ) { if ( ! isset( $charset ) ) { $charset = $this->charset; } if ( ! isset( $collate ) ) { $collate = $this->collate; } if ( $this->has_cap( 'collation' ) && ! empty( $charset ) ) { $set_charset_succeeded = true; if ( function_exists( 'mysqli_set_charset' ) && $this->has_cap( 'set_charset' ) ) { $set_charset_succeeded = mysqli_set_charset( $dbh, $charset ); } if ( $set_charset_succeeded ) { $query = $this->prepare( 'SET NAMES %s', $charset ); if ( ! empty( $collate ) ) { $query .= $this->prepare( ' COLLATE %s', $collate ); } mysqli_query( $dbh, $query ); } } }Introduced in 3.1.0. Unchanged from 6.7.7 through 7.1.0.
Signature, return type and hooks compared across 5 parsed releases.
src/wp-includes/class-wpdb.php, and regenerated for each WordPress release so it tracks the code rather than a snapshot of it.