How to Convert Character to Unicode in Python

The ord() is a built-in Python function that accepts a string of length one as an argument and returns the Unicode code point representation of the passed argument. 

Python ord

Python ord() is a built-in function that returns the number representing the Unicode code of a specified character. The ord() method returns the integer representing the Unicode code point for the given Unicode character.

 For example, ord(‘B’) returns 66, a Unicode code point value of character ‘B.’ The ord() method is the inverse of the chr() function.

See the following syntax.

ord(c)

The c parameter is any character whose length is 1.

See the following example.

# app.py

# code point of integer
print(ord('1'))

# code point of alphabet 
print(ord('E'))
print(ord('K'))

# code point of character
print(ord('$'))
print(ord('#'))
print(ord('~'))

See the output.

➜  pyt python3 app.py
49
69
75
36
35
126
➜  pyt

If the string length is more than one, then the TypeError will be raised.

See the following example of TypeError.

# app.py

print(ord('MK'))

See the output.

➜  pyt python3 app.py
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "app.py", line 2, in <module>
    print(ord('MK'))
TypeError: ord() expected a character, but string of length 2 found
➜  pyt

So, we got the TypeError. That means we do not need to pass the string of length of 2 or more.

The Unicode code point is given the meaning by the Unicode standard, which is a number.

Code points of numbers 0-10 by using a range

See the following code example.

# app.py

for n in range(10):

    print("Unicode code point of", n, '=', ord(str(n)))

See the output.

➜  pyt python3 app.py
Unicode code point of 0 = 48
Unicode code point of 1 = 49
Unicode code point of 2 = 50
Unicode code point of 3 = 51
Unicode code point of 4 = 52
Unicode code point of 5 = 53
Unicode code point of 6 = 54
Unicode code point of 7 = 55
Unicode code point of 8 = 56
Unicode code point of 9 = 57
➜  pyt

As range items are numbers, it will produce an error if directly used in the ord() function. As such, ord() takes a string, so the str() function is used for converting the number into the string.

Dynamic character example

See the following code example.

# app.py

c = input("Enter a character: ")

data = ord(c)


print("The Unicode code point of the character is: ", c, "=", data)

See the output.

➜  pyt python3 app.py
Enter a character: E
The Unicode code point of the character is:  E = 69
➜  pyt

That’s it for this tutorial.