NCHAR – Ramblings of a Crafty DBA

I am going to continue my series of very short articles or tidbits on Transaction SQL string functions. I will exploring the NCHAR() function today. The NCHAR() function takes an integer value, UNICODE value from 0 to 65535 and returns a single UNICODE character string. The following example returns the character ‘0’ given the UNICODE value of 48.

-- ASCII/UNICODE value for zero
declare @var_tmp int = 48;

-- Return the single character, zero
select nchar(@var_tmp) as single_nchar;

-- ASCII/UNICODE value for zero

declare @var_tmp int = 48;

-- Return the single character, zero

select nchar(@var_tmp) as single_nchar;

output:

single_nchar
-----------
0

output:

single_nchar

-----------

One thing to always worry about when using TSQL functions is how will it react with a UNKNOWN or NULL values?

-- UNKNOWN value returns NULL
select nchar(NULL) as single_nchar;

1 2	-- UNKNOWN value returns NULL select nchar(NULL) as single_nchar;

output:

single_nchar
-----------
NULL

output:

single_nchar

-----------

NULL

Another thing to test is how the…

Tag: NCHAR

String Functions – NCHAR()

Basic Training – Data Types – Part 4