Python does not have a character data type. Instead, it has a string data type, and you can represent a character as a string with length 1.

When it comes to converting an integer (int) to a character (char), it involves transforming a numeric value into its corresponding character representation, typically using ASCII or Unicode mappings.

Python provides a built-in way called the “chr()” function to convert an integer to a character. It accepts an integer argument and returns a string representing a character at that Unicode code point.

Conversion using ASCII/Unicode

my_int = 70

print(my_int)
# Output: 70

print(type(<meta charset='utf-8'>my_int))
# Output: <class 'int'>

# Convert integer to character
my_char = chr(my_int)

print(my_char)
print(type(my_char))

print(chr(65))
# Output: A

print(chr(97))
# Output: a

List of integers to characters

What if we have a list of integers and we want to convert each element to its corresponding character type:

list_with_char_codes = [69, 72, 78, 81, 90, 99]

for number in list_with_char_codes:
    character = chr(number)
    print("Character of ASCII value", number, "is", character)

# Output:
# Character of ASCII value 69 is E
# Character of ASCII value 72 is H
# Character of ASCII value 78 is N
# Character of ASCII value 81 is Q
# Character of ASCII value 90 is Z
# Character of ASCII value 99 is c

Error handling

If you pass an invalid code point to chr(), it will raise a ValueError.

try:
    print(chr(1114112))  # Out of range
except ValueError as e:
    print(e)
    
# Output: ValueError: chr() arg not in range(0x110000)

In the above code, you can see that we used the try/except mechanism to handle the potential ValueError, which prevents the program from crashing.

Convert an Integer to a String Character (e.g., 5 to ‘5’)

In this case, we will convert an integer to its string representation. For example, 5 will be converted to “5”. For that, we can use the “str()” function or “string formatting”.

Note that we are not converting to its ASCII value here.

int_value = 9
print(type(int_value))
# Output: <class 'int'>
print(str(int_value))
# Output: "9"
print(type(str(int_value)))
# Output: <class 'str'>


int_value = 123
print(type(int_value))
# Output: <class 'int'>
print(str(int_value))
# Output: "123"
print(type(str(int_value)))
# Output: <class 'str'>

The above program shows that it returns a single-character string for a single integer and a multi-character string for multi-digit integers.

Handling negative integers

Negative integers don’t directly convert to an ASCII value, but you can convert them into a string representation using the str() function.

# Handle negative integers
int_value = -72
try:
    print(chr(int_value))
    # Output: ValueError: chr() arg not in range(0x110000)
except ValueError as e:
    print(e)

# Alternative: Convert to string
print(str(int_value))
# Output: -72

We got the ValueError because the chr() function does not accept a negative integer, as Unicode code points are non-negative. For string conversion, str() includes the negative sign (e.g., -72 becomes “-72”).