ASCII()

The ASCII() operator produces a character from its ordinal value.

Syntax

ASCII ( int-expr )
  1. int-expr is an integer expression. The range of possible values depends on the current application locale and length semantics.

Usage

The ASCII() operator returns the character corresponding to the ASCII code or 16bit UNICODE code point passed as a parameter, in the current character encoding defined by the application locale, and depends on the current length semantics.

The range of possible values of the int-expr parameter depends on the current application locale / character set:
  • For single byte encodings (like ISO8859-15), the argument must be in the range of 0 to 255.
  • For UTF-8, using char length semantics, the argument must be any valid 16bit code point (in the range 0-65535).
  • For any other locale setting (any multibyte character set, or UTF-8 using byte length semantics), the argument must be in the range 0 to 127.

The ASCII() function can be also used to produce special characters such as escape (ASCII(27)), newline (ASCII(10)), horizontal tab (ASCII(9)).

When the argument is zero, ASCII() has a different behavior, depending on the context:
  • ASCII(0) only displays the NUL/0 null character within the PRINT statement.
  • If you specify ASCII(0) in other contexts, it returns a blank space.

If the character encoding is single byte, or when using UTF-8 and char length semantics, ASCII() is the inverse of ORD().

Example

MAIN
  DISPLAY ASCII(65), ASCII(66), ASCII(7)
END MAIN