Find ASCII Value of a Character in Python

ASCII, which stands for the American Standard Code for Information Interchange, is a character encoding standard that represents each character as a number between 0 and 127. Each number corresponds to a unique character. For instance, the ASCII value of the character ‘A’ is 65, and that of ‘a’ is 97.

In Python, finding the ASCII value of a character is a straightforward task, thanks to the built-in function ord(). This article explores how to retrieve the ASCII value of a character using this function.

The ord() function

Python’s built-in ord() function returns an integer representing the Unicode code point of the given Unicode character. For ASCII characters, this code point is the same as its ASCII value.

Syntax:

ord(character)

Where character is a single Unicode character string.

Return Value: This function returns an integer representing the Unicode code point of the given Unicode character.

Example: Finding the ASCII value of a character

Here’s a simple program to retrieve the ASCII value of a character:

# Get the character from the user
char = input("Enter a single character: ")

# Check if the user entered a single character
if len(char) == 1:
    ascii_value = ord(char)
    print(f"The ASCII value of the character '{char}' is: {ascii_value}")
else:
    print("Please enter a single character.")

When you run the above program and input the character ‘A’, the output will be:

Output:
The ASCII value of the character 'A' is: 65

Bonus: Convert ASCII Value to Character

In the same way you might want to find the ASCII value of a character, you might also want to convert an ASCII value back to its corresponding character. For this, you can use Python’s chr() function.

Syntax:

chr(ascii_value)

Where ascii_value is an integer representing the ASCII value.

Return Value: This function returns a string representing a character whose Unicode code point is the given integer.

Here’s a simple example:

# Get the ASCII value from the user
ascii_value = int(input("Enter an ASCII value (0-127): "))

# Check if the value is in the ASCII range
if 0 <= ascii_value <= 127:
    char = chr(ascii_value)
    print(f"The character corresponding to the ASCII value {ascii_value} is: '{char}'")
else:
    print("Please enter a valid ASCII value between 0 and 127.")

If you run the program and input the value 65, the output will be:

Output:
The character corresponding to the ASCII value 65 is: 'A'

Conclusion

Python offers straightforward mechanisms to work with ASCII values through the ord() and chr() functions. Whether you're looking to find the ASCII value of a character or retrieve a character from its ASCII value, these functions make the task simple and intuitive.