Ascii

ascii returns the code of the first character of a string.

Syntax

   ascii(STRING_EXPR)

• STRING_EXPR is an expression that returns a character string result.

Examples

  Local Integer I
  Local Char MYSTRING(20)
  I = ascii(MYSTRING) : # the value of I is 0
  MYSTRING="ABCDEFG"
  I = ascii(MYSTRING) : # the value of I is now 65

Description

ascii returns an integer value that is the code of the first character of a string. For a character that belongs to the latin character set, the value returned is in the range [32,127]; for special characters, it is in the range [1,31]; latin accentuated characters are usually in the range [128,255]. Additional characters such as chinese characters are in the range [256,65565].

The character set used internally by the engine in memory is UCS2, and the ascii value corresponds to this encoding. When reading or writing data on a file, UTF8 encoding can be used; however, this is never the case for character strings used by the Sage X3 engine. The translation from UCS2 to UTF8 and the reverse is done by setting the variable adxium to the right value.

The reverse function of ascii is chr$, which allows you to create a one-character string by giving its UCS2 code as an argument.

When the string is empty, ascii returns 0.

Associated errors

Error	Description
10	The argument is not a string.

See also

chr$, string$, adxium, Iomode.