Database Software

Hi,

Is there an Oracle supplied function for finding a character's codepoint value (either in decimal or hex)? I.e. given a character like 'Æ' (U+00C6) I'd like a function that returns either 198 or 'C6'.

The ASCII() function is the closest thing I could find but it returns varied, and rather unhelpful decimal representations of the character, not its codepoint. E.g.

-- on a db with NLS_CHARACTERSET and NLS_NCHAR_CHARACTERSET set to UTF8

SQL> select ascii('Æ') from dual ;

ASCII('?')
----------
  15712189

SQL>
SQL> select ascii( unistr('\00C6') ) from dual ;

ASCII(UNISTR('\00C6'))
----------------------
                 50054

-- on a db with NLS_CHARACTERSET set to AL32UTF8 and NLS_NCHAR_CHARACTERSET set to AL16UTF16

SQL> select ascii('Æ') from dual ;

ASCII('Æ')
----------
  14844057

SQL> select ascii( unistr('\00C6') ) from dual ;

ASCII(UNISTR('\00C6'))
----------------------
                   198