CHAR (Transact-SQL)
Applies to: SQL Server (all supported versions)
Azure SQL Database
Azure SQL Managed Instance
Azure Synapse Analytics
Parallel Data Warehouse
This function converts an int ASCII code to a character value.
Transact-SQL Syntax Conventions
Syntax
CHAR ( integer_expression )
Note
To view Transact-SQL syntax for SQL Server 2014 and earlier, see Previous versions documentation.
Arguments
integer_expression
An integer from 0 through 255. CHAR
returns a NULL
value for integer expressions outside this range, or when then integer expresses only the first byte of a double-byte character.
Note
Some non-European character sets, such as Shift Japanese Industrial Standards, include characters than can be represented in a single-byte coding scheme, but require multibyte encoding. For more information on character sets, refer to Single-Byte and Multibyte Character Sets.
Return types
char(1)
Remarks
Use CHAR
to insert control characters into character strings. This table shows some frequently used control characters.
Control character | Value |
---|---|
Tab | char(9) |
Line feed | char(10) |
Carriage return | char(13) |
Examples
A. Using ASCII and CHAR to print ASCII values from a string
This example prints the ASCII value and character for each character in the string New Moon
.
SET TEXTSIZE 0;
-- Create variables for the character string and for the current
-- position in the string.
DECLARE @position INT, @string CHAR(8);
-- Initialize the current position and the string variables.
SET @position = 1;
SET @string = 'New Moon';
WHILE @position <= DATALENGTH(@string)
BEGIN
SELECT ASCII(SUBSTRING(@string, @position, 1)),
CHAR(ASCII(SUBSTRING(@string, @position, 1)))
SET @position = @position + 1
END;
GO
Here is the result set.
----------- -
78 N
----------- -
101 e
----------- -
119 w
----------- -
32
----------- -
77 M
----------- -
111 o
----------- -
111 o
----------- -
110 n
B. Using CHAR to insert a control character
This example uses CHAR(13)
to print the name and e-mail address of an employee on separate lines, when the query returns its results as text. This example uses the AdventureWorks2012 database.
SELECT p.FirstName + ' ' + p.LastName, + CHAR(13) + pe.EmailAddress
FROM Person.Person p
INNER JOIN Person.EmailAddress pe ON p.BusinessEntityID = pe.BusinessEntityID
AND p.BusinessEntityID = 1;
GO
Here is the result set.
Ken Sanchez
ken0@adventure-works.com
(1 row(s) affected)
C. Using ASCII and CHAR to print ASCII values from a string
This example assumes an ASCII character set. It returns the character value for six different ASCII character number values.
SELECT CHAR(65) AS [65], CHAR(66) AS [66],
CHAR(97) AS [97], CHAR(98) AS [98],
CHAR(49) AS [49], CHAR(50) AS [50];
Here is the result set.
65 66 97 98 49 50
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
A B a b 1 2
D. Using CHAR to insert a control character
This example uses CHAR(13)
to return information from sys.databases on separate lines, when the query returns its results as text.
SELECT name, 'was created on ', create_date, CHAR(13), name, 'is currently ', state_desc
FROM sys.databases;
GO
Here is the result set.
name create_date name state_desc
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
master was created on 2003-04-08 09:13:36.390 master is currently ONLINE
tempdb was created on 2014-01-10 17:24:24.023 tempdb is currently ONLINE
AdventureWorksPDW2012 was created on 2014-05-07 09:05:07.083 AdventureWorksPDW2012 is currently ONLINE
E. Using CHAR to return single-byte characters
This example uses the integer and hex values in the valid range for ASCII. The CHAR function is able to output the single-byte Japanese character.
SELECT CHAR(188) AS single_byte_representing_complete_character,
CHAR(0xBC) AS single_byte_representing_complete_character;
GO
Here is the result set.
single_byte_representing_complete_character single_byte_representing_complete_character
------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------
シ シ
F. Using CHAR to return multibyte characters
This example uses the an integer and hex values in the valid range for ASCII. However, the CHAR function returns NULL because the parameter represents only the first byte of a multibyte character.
SELECT CHAR(129) AS first_byte_of_double_byte_character,
CHAR(0x81) AS first_byte_of_double_byte_character;
GO
Here is the result set.
first_byte_of_double_byte_character first_byte_of_double_byte_character
----------------------------------- -----------------------------------
NULL NULL
See also
ASCII (Transact-SQL)
NCHAR (Transact-SQL)
UNICODE (Transact-SQL)
+ (String Concatenation) (Transact-SQL)
String Functions (Transact-SQL)