CHAR

Return the character corresponding to the given Unicode code point.

Category: stringReturns: VARCHARDialect: PostgreSql

Syntax

CHAR(code)

Description

## Overview Returns the single-character string whose Unicode code point equals the given integer. CHAR is the inverse of ASCII: ASCII(CHAR(65)) is 65. Use CHAR to emit control characters such as tab (9), line feed (10), and carriage return (13), and to generate arbitrary Unicode characters at runtime by code point. CHR is an alias of CHAR with identical semantics. ## Behavior - Returns NULL when the input is NULL. - Accepts code points in the range [0, 0x10FFFF] (the full Unicode range). - For code point 0, returns a string containing a single NUL character (U+0000). - For code points in surrogate ranges [0xD800, 0xDFFF], the result is implementation-defined; do not rely on it. - Produces a string of length 1 in characters, but the byte length depends on the code point (1 byte for [0, 127], 2 bytes for [128, 2047], 3 bytes for [2048, 65535], 4 bytes for [65536, 0x10FFFF]). - Negative values and values above 0x10FFFF raise an error. ## Compatibility - Matches the common SQL convention for CHR/CHAR code-point conversion. - CHR is a supported alias.

Parameters

Name	Type	Description
`code`		Specifies the Unicode code point to convert. Must be a non-negative integer no greater than 0x10FFFF.

Examples

-- ASCII letter
SELECT CHAR(65);  -- 'A'

-- Lowercase letter
SELECT CHAR(97);  -- 'a'

-- Newline character
SELECT CHAR(10);  -- line feed

-- Space character
SELECT CHAR(32);  -- ' '

-- Unicode euro sign
SELECT CHAR(8364);  -- '€'

-- NULL propagates
SELECT CHAR(CAST(NULL AS INT));  -- NULL

Pitfalls

CHAR produces real control characters. CHAR(10) is a literal line feed and will break single-line exporters unless quoted.
Passing 0 produces a NUL character, which many downstream tools treat as string termination. Avoid CHAR(0) in text output unless the consumer is known to handle it.
CHAR of a surrogate code point (0xD800 through 0xDFFF) yields implementation-defined output. Do not round-trip surrogate halves through this function.
Values above 0x10FFFF raise an error rather than being silently wrapped. Validate dynamic code point inputs against the Unicode range.