SQL - UNICODE() Function

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The SQL UNICODE() function is used to retrieve the integer(or uni-code value) value of the characters.

It accepts a string value as a parameter and returns the integer value(Unicode value) for the first character of the given expression. It returns NULL if any argument is passed as NULL to this function.

Unicode is an International character encoding standard that includes various languages, scripts, and symbols. Each letter, digit, or symbol has its own Unicode value. Unicode is an ASCII extension that allows for the representation of many more characters.

Syntax

Following is the syntax of the SQL UNICODE() function −

UNICODE (char_exp)   

Parameters

• char_exp − It is a nchar or nvarchar expression from which the Unicode of the first characters is to be retrieved.

Return value

This function returns an integer value of the first character.

Example

The following program uses the SQL UNICODE() function to retrieve the integer(Unicode value) of the string ‘hello’.

SELECT UNICODE('hello') AS UNICODE_VALUE;

Output

On executing the above program, it will produce the following output −

+---------------+
| UNICODE_VALUE |
+---------------+
| 104           |
+---------------+

Example

The following example uses the NCHAR() and UNICODE() functions to retrieve the UNICODE value of the first character of the string ‘@TutorialsPoint'.

DECLARE @exp_string NCHAR(12);  
SET @exp_string = '@TutorialsPoint';  
SELECT NCHAR(UNICODE(@exp_string)) AS FIRST_CHAR, UNICODE(@exp_string) AS UNICODE_VALUE;

Output

The above program produces the following output −

+-------------+-----------------+
| FIRST_CHAR  | UNICODE_VALUE   |
+-------------+-----------------+
| @           |     64          |
+-------------+-----------------+

Example

You can also pass the numeric value to the UNICODE() function, and it returns the Unicode value of the first digit.

In this example, we are passing a numeric value 12345 as an argument to the UNICODE() function, it will return the UNICODE value of the first digit, which is 1.

SELECT UNICODE(12345) AS UNICODE_VALUE;

Output

On executing the above SQL query, it produces the following output −

+---------------+
| UNICODE_VALUE |
+---------------+
| 49            |
+---------------+

Example

If any argument is passed as NULL to the UNICODE() function, this function returns NULL in the result.

SELECT UNICODE(NULL) AS UNICODE_VALUE;

Output

Following is the output of the above query −

+---------------+
| UNICODE_VALUE |
+---------------+
| NULL          |
+---------------+

Example

You can also pass a table column as an argument to the UNICODE() function to retrieve a Unicode value of the first character from the content of the column. Assume we have created a table with the name Customers using the CREATEstatement as follows −

CREATE TABLE CUSTOMERS(    
ID INT NOT NULL,    
FIRST_NAME VARCHAR (20),
LAST_NAME VARCHAR(20),
AGE INT NOT NULL,    
ADDRESS CHAR (25) ,    
SALARY DECIMAL (18, 2));

Now let's insert some records into the customers table using the INSERT statement as follows:−

INSERT INTO CUSTOMERS VALUES (1, 'Ramesh','KUMAR', 32, 'Ahmedabad', 2000.00 ); 
INSERT INTO CUSTOMERS VALUES (2, 'Khilan','Verma', 25, 'Delhi', 1500.00 ); 
INSERT INTO CUSTOMERS VALUES (3, 'kaushik','Gupta', 23, 'Kota', 2000.00 ); 
INSERT INTO CUSTOMERS VALUES (4, 'Chaitali','Pal', 25, 'Mumbai', 6500.00 );

The Following SQL query retrieve the Unicode value of the first character of the content of the column FIRST_NAME in the Customers table −

SELECT ID, FIRST_NAME, LAST_NAME, UNICODE(FIRST_NAME) AS UNICODE_VALUE FROM CUSTOMERS;

Output

Following is the output of the above query −

+----+------------+--------------+-----------------+
| ID | FIRST_NAME | LAST_NAME    |  UNICODE_VALUE  |
+----+------------+--------------+-----------------+
|  1 | Ramesh     | Kumar        |    82           |
|  2 | Khilan     | Verma        |    75           |
|  3 | kaushik    | Gupta        |    107          |
|  4 | Chaitali   | Pal          |    67           |
+----+------------+--------------+-----------------+