In MySQL, the ORD() function returns the numeric value of the leftmost character of a given string. You provide the string as an argument.

If the leftmost character is a multibyte character, the returned value is calculated from the numeric values of its constituent bytes. If the leftmost character is not a multibyte character, the return value is its ASCII code (which is the same result as when using the ASCII() function).

Syntax

The syntax goes like this:

ORD(str)

Where str is the string from which you want the numeric code of the leftmost character.

Example 1 – Basic Usage

Here’s an example to demonstrate.

SELECT ORD('MySQL');

Result:

+----------------+
| ASCII('MySQL') |
+----------------+
|             77 |
+----------------+

So we can see that the numeric for the letter M is 77. This is exactly the same result we’d get if using the ASCII() function, because the letter M falls within the ASCII range.

Here’s an example with the two functions side by side:

SELECT 
  ASCII('M'),
  ORD('M');

Result:

+------------+----------+
| ASCII('M') | ORD('M') |
+------------+----------+
|         77 |       77 |
+------------+----------+

Example 2 – Multibyte Characters

Here’s an example that uses multibyte characters.

SELECT 
  ORD('€'),
  ORD('á'),
  ORD('仮'),
  ORD('平'),
  ORD('✓');

Result:

+------------+-----------+------------+------------+------------+
| ORD('€')   | ORD('á')  | ORD('仮')  | ORD('平')  | ORD('✓')   |
+------------+-----------+------------+------------+------------+
|   14844588 |     50081 |   14990254 |   15055283 |   14851219 |
+------------+-----------+------------+------------+------------+

Example 2 – Case Sensitivity

Uppercase characters have a different numeric value to their lowercase counterparts. Example:

SELECT 
  ORD('A'),
  ORD('a');

Result:

+----------+----------+
| ORD('A') | ORD('a') |
+----------+----------+
|       65 |       97 |
+----------+----------+