Python provides a host of built-in utilities for translating between encoded and numerical representations of values, strings, and everything in between. The Python ord function is a built-in utility that, given a single Unicode character, will return its ordinal value.<\/p>\n
The term\u00a0ordinal<\/em> means\u00a0countable\u00a0<\/em>and in the context of Python’s In this article, I will showcase the basics of what the ord function does in Python, why you should care, and some quirky edge cases, and the history behind them.<\/p>\n TL;DR<\/strong> – Use the Ordinal values have been used to map characters to their respective encodings since at least ASCII. Python’s The 0-127 range that maps ASCII characters within the Unicode system corresponds to the ordinal values used in the ASCII system as well. This means ASCII is considered a subset of Unicode. Given ASCII predates the Unicode system it may be appropriate to say Unicode is a superset of ASCII. For this article, I am going to demonstrate the For basic usage examples, we’ll take a look at the ASCII characters and how Python’s ord function interprets them.<\/p>\n Note that ASCII defines some non-printable characters in the first 32 characters and also at the tail-end of the range. See this ASCII table<\/a> for more info on that. Python’s You might be asking yourself what those 2 funky symbols at the end of the\u00a0printable<\/em> ASCII values are\u2014they don’t\u00a0seem<\/em> very printable. Here’s where Python’s Using our ASCII lookup table<\/a>, we note the 11 and 12 values are assigned to the vertical tab<\/em> (VT) and form feed with new page<\/em> (NP) characters. Definitely not a revelation worth writing home about but certainly illustrative of the utility of Python’s The Unicode system has expanded much since its inception. From the 0-127 range given to ASCII, the system is now in version 13.0. This encompasses everything from international characters, extended character sets, mathematical symbols, and yes\u2014emojis<\/em>.<\/p>\n For a complete listing of current Unicode symbols check out the official Unicode character code chart page<\/a>. For now, just know that Unicode allows the possibility<\/em> of 1,222,998 possible characters, many of which are yet to be reserved. There are currently only 1,114,111 assigned <\/i>characters. See this post by John D. Cook<\/a> for more info.<\/p>\n I bore you with Unicode facts because this is the limit of ordinal values of which Python’s Integers can become cumbersome for large values or applications such as web use. Hexadecimal values aren’t any easier to remember but offer a more concise representation for many applications making them useful as character representations. Python’s Here I’ve converted the hexadecimal value Note<\/strong>: Check out our article on how to convert binary to hexadecimal in Python<\/a> for some more info on these types of functions.<\/p>\n Python’s ord function isn’t something that I often use. More times than not, I fall back to it when debugging display issues. It’s useful in finding which character is causing all one’s encoding nightmares! This article was intended to help introduce the ord function and its basic operations in Python, the basic concept of ordinal values in encoding, and hopefully present a use-case interesting enough to help the reader remember the basics. Python’s ord function provides the low-level utility that continues to make it one of the most popular programming languages for developers<\/a> of all skill levels.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Python provides a host of built-in utilities for translating between encoded and numerical representations of values, strings, and everything in between. The Python ord function is a built-in utility that, given a single Unicode character, will return its ordinal value. The term\u00a0ordinal means\u00a0countable\u00a0and in the context of Python’s ord function will return the integer value […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":856,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[655,10],"tags":[123,222,362,29,360,361,143,363,168],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alpharithms.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/854"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alpharithms.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alpharithms.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alpharithms.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alpharithms.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=854"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.alpharithms.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/854\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2341,"href":"https:\/\/www.alpharithms.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/854\/revisions\/2341"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alpharithms.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/856"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alpharithms.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alpharithms.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=854"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alpharithms.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}ord<\/code> function will return the integer value assigned to a character in the Unicode encoding system. This can be useful when converting between bytes to strings, binary to encoded representations, or sheer hobbyism.<\/p>\nord<\/code> function to get an integer value of a single character.<\/p>\n# Get the ordinal value for the character 'z'\r\n>>> ord('z')\r\n122\r\n<\/pre>\nIntroduction<\/h2>\n
ord<\/code> function will convert any Unicode character to its numerical representation<\/a> provided that character is Unicode-compatible. ASCII, for example, maps to the first 127 numbers assigned to the Unicode system. These are the standard English characters, symbols, and integers.<\/p>\nord<\/code> function’s utility mostly within the confines of the ASCII ordinal range.<\/p>\nASCII Examples<\/h2>\n
# Get a string of all ASCII characters\r\nASCII = \"\".join(chr(x) for x in range(128))\r\n\r\n>>> \u0001\u0002\u0003\u0004\u0005\u0006\t\r\n\u000e\u000f\u0010\u0011\u0012\u0013\u0014\u0015\u0016\u0017\u0018\u0019\u001a\u001b\u001c\u001d\u001e\u001f !\"#$%&'()*+,-.\/0123456789:;<=>?@ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ[\\]^_`abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz{|}~\r\n<\/pre>\nstring<\/code> library also provides convenient access to only the printable characters:<\/p>\nimport string\r\n\r\n# The printable ASCII values from the string module\r\nstring.printable\r\n\r\n>>> 0123456789abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ!\"#$%&'()*+,-.\/:;<=>?@[\\]^_`{|}~ \t\r\n\u000b\f\u000b\f\f\r\n<\/pre>\nord<\/code> function comes in handy. Let’s use it to find out what those characters are!<\/p>\n# Print the ordinal values of the last two characters\r\nfor char in string.printable[-2:]:\r\n print(char, '-', ord(char))\r\n\r\n>>> \r\n\u000b - 11\r\n\f\u000b - 12<\/pre>\n
ord<\/code> function.<\/p>\nA Note on Unicode<\/h2>\n
ord<\/code> function is practically useful. In other words\u2014values outside the range of 0-1,114,111 won’t map to anything. This can be displayed via the chr<\/code> function.<\/p>\n# Maximum Assigned Unicode Value\r\nchr(1114111)\r\n>>> ????\r\n\r\n# One value higher\r\nchr(1114111 + 1)\r\n\r\n>>> ValueError: chr() arg not in range(0x110000)<\/pre>\n
Hexadecimal<\/h2>\n
ord<\/code> function can be applied for hexadecimal interpretation with a little extra syntax\u2014still staying within the bounds of built-in functions. Consider the following:<\/p>\n# Define a variable as the max Unicode value\r\n>>> int('0x110000', 16) - 1\r\n1114111\r\n\r\n>>> chr(v)\r\n????\r\n\r\n>>> ord(chr(v))\r\n1114111\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n0x11000<\/code> (the highest reserved Unicode character) to an integer value (its\u00a0ordinal<\/em> value), used the ord<\/code> operator to print the Unicode character (it’s not actually a character<\/a>), then used the ord<\/code> operator to wrap the chr<\/code> value and re-convert to the integer. Busywork? Yes. Illustrative of the interplay of Unicode, ordinal, and hexadecimal values?\u00a0Hopefully<\/em>.<\/p>\nFinal Thoughts<\/h2>\n