ASCII

Syntax

Description of the illustration ascii.gif

Purpose

ASCII returns the decimal representation in the database character set of the first character of char.

char can be of datatype CHAR, VARCHAR2, NCHAR, or NVARCHAR2. The value returned is of datatype NUMBER. If your database character set is 7-bit ASCII, then this function returns an ASCII value. If your database character set is EBCDIC Code, then this function returns an EBCDIC value. There is no corresponding EBCDIC character function.

This function does not support CLOB data directly. However, CLOBs can be passed in as arguments through implicit data conversion.

Examples

The following example returns employees whose last names begin with the letter L, whose ASCII equivalent is 76:

SELECT last_name FROM employees
   WHERE ASCII(SUBSTR(last_name, 1, 1,)) = 76;
 
LAST_NAME
-------------------------
Ladwig
Landry
Lee
Livingston