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ToCharacterCode["string"]

gives a list of the integer codes corresponding to the characters in a string.

ToCharacterCode["string","encoding"]

gives integer codes according to the specified encoding.

Details
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Examples  
Basic Examples  
Scope  
Properties & Relations  
Neat Examples  
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ToCharacterCode

ToCharacterCode["string"]

gives a list of the integer codes corresponding to the characters in a string.

ToCharacterCode["string","encoding"]

gives integer codes according to the specified encoding.

Details

  • ToCharacterCode handles both ordinary and special characters.
  • ToCharacterCode["string"] and ToCharacterCode["string","Unicode"] return standard internal character codes used by the Wolfram Language, which are the same on all computer systems.
  • For characters on an ordinary American English keyboard, the character codes follow the ASCII standard.
  • For common European languages, they follow the ISO Latin‐1 standard.
  • For other characters, they follow the Unicode standard.
  • The Wolfram System defines various additional characters in private Unicode space, with character codes between 57344 and 63743.
  • Character codes returned by ToCharacterCode["string"] lie between 0 and 1114111.
  • Encodings supported in ToCharacterCode["string","encoding"] include the values in $CharacterEncodings in addition to "Unicode".
  • If a particular character has no character code in a given encoding, ToCharacterCode returns None in place of a character code.
  • ToCharacterCode[{"s1","s2",…}] gives a list of the lists of integer codes for each of the si.

Examples

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Basic Examples  (2)

Find ASCII or Unicode character codes:

Wolfram Language code: ToCharacterCode["abcABCαβγ"]

Reassemble a string from character codes:

Wolfram Language code: FromCharacterCode[%]

Get the byte values corresponding to the UTF8 encoding of a string:

Wolfram Language code: ToCharacterCode["abcABCαβγ", "UTF8"]

Reassemble the string from its UTF8 encoding:

Wolfram Language code: FromCharacterCode[%, "UTF8"]

Scope  (3)

Find the code points of several strings:

Wolfram Language code: ToCharacterCode[{"abc", "def", "ghi"}]

Use a character encoding:

Wolfram Language code: ToCharacterCode["αβγ", "ISO8859-7"]

Get the codes of all printable ASCII characters:

Wolfram Language code: ToCharacterCode[" !\"#$%&'()*+,-./0123456789:;<=>?@ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ[\\]^_`abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz{|}~"]

Some ISO Latin-1 letters:

Wolfram Language code: ToCharacterCode["ÀÁÂÃÄÅÆÇÈÉÊËÌÍÎÏÐÑÒÓÔÕÖ×ØÙÚÛÜÝÞßàáâãäåæçèéêëìíîïðñòóôõö÷øùúûüýþÿ"]

Some characters in the private use area:

Wolfram Language code: ToCharacterCode["EIⅉ𝔇𝔈𝔉𝕎𝕏𝕐ℤ\[TabKey]\[SpaceKey]\[DeleteKey]"]

Some emojis:

Wolfram Language code: ToCharacterCode["😀😁😂😃😄😅😆😇"]

Properties & Relations  (6)

ToCharacterCode always returns a list:

Wolfram Language code: ToCharacterCode["a"]

The default encoding is "Unicode":

Wolfram Language code: ToCharacterCode["α"] == ToCharacterCode["α", "Unicode"]

If a particular character code does not exist in the specified encoding, None is returned for it:

Wolfram Language code: ToCharacterCode["aâα", "ISO8859-1"]

FromCharacterCode is the inverse of ToCharacterCode:

Wolfram Language code: ToCharacterCode["∮"]
Wolfram Language code: FromCharacterCode[%]

This is also true for lists of strings:

Wolfram Language code: ToCharacterCode[{"ABCD", "abcd"}]
Wolfram Language code: FromCharacterCode[%]

The allowed values of the second argument are given by $CharacterEncodings:

Wolfram Language code: # -> ToCharacterCode["â", #]& /@ $CharacterEncodings

Some characters are composed of multiple codes:

Wolfram Language code: ToCharacterCode["👩🏽‍🎓"]

Neat Examples  (1)

"Plot" a string:

Wolfram Language code: ListPlot[ToCharacterCode["this is a string."], Filling -> Axis]
Wolfram Research (1991), ToCharacterCode, Wolfram Language function, https://reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/ToCharacterCode.html (updated 2019).

Text

Wolfram Research (1991), ToCharacterCode, Wolfram Language function, https://reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/ToCharacterCode.html (updated 2019).

CMS

Wolfram Language. 1991. "ToCharacterCode." Wolfram Language & System Documentation Center. Wolfram Research. Last Modified 2019. https://reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/ToCharacterCode.html.

APA

Wolfram Language. (1991). ToCharacterCode. Wolfram Language & System Documentation Center. Retrieved from https://reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/ToCharacterCode.html

BibTeX

@misc{reference.wolfram_2026_tocharactercode, author="Wolfram Research", title="{ToCharacterCode}", year="2019", howpublished="\url{https://reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/ToCharacterCode.html}", note=[Accessed: 08-October-2026]}

BibLaTeX

@online{reference.wolfram_2026_tocharactercode, organization={Wolfram Research}, title={ToCharacterCode}, year={2019}, url={https://reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/ToCharacterCode.html}, note=[Accessed: 08-October-2026]}