ORDCHR(3am) GNU Awk Extension Modules ORDCHR(3am)
NAME
ordchr - convert characters to strings and vice versa
SYNOPSIS
@load "ordchr"
number = ord("A")
string = chr(65)
DESCRIPTION
The ordchr extension adds two functions named ord(). and chr(), as
follows.
ord() This function takes a string argument, and returns the numeric
value of the first character in the string, or -1 if there was a
conversion error.
chr() This function takes a numeric argument and returns a string
whose first character is that represented by the number. It
returns the empty string if there was a conversion error.
These functions are inspired by the Pascal language functions of the
same name.
NOTES
As of release 5.4 of gawk, these functions suport wide-character code
points.
EXAMPLE
@load "ordchr"
...
printf("The numeric value of 'A' is %d\n", ord("A"))
printf("The string value of 65 is %s\n", chr(65))
SEE ALSO
GAWK: Effective AWK Programming, filefuncs(3), fnmatch(3),
fork(3), inplace(3), readdir(3), readfile(3), revoutput(3),
rwarray(3), time(3).
AUTHOR
Arnold Robbins, arnold@skeeve.com.
COPYING PERMISSIONS
Copyright (C) 2012, 2013, 2018, 2025, Free Software Foundation, Inc.
Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this
manual page provided the copyright notice and this permission notice
are preserved on all copies.
Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions of this
manual page under the conditions for verbatim copying, provided that
the entire resulting derived work is distributed under the terms of a
permission notice identical to this one.
Permission is granted to copy and distribute translations of this
manual page into another language, under the above conditions for
modified versions, except that this permission notice may be stated in
a translation approved by the Foundation.
Free Software Foundation June 29 2025 ORDCHR(3am)
gawk 5.4.0 - Generated Sun Feb 22 13:01:54 CST 2026