Help !!! - regarding [b]ASCII[/b] sql function

Question

Hello -
From oracle docs I got the following regarding ASCII function -
ASCII returns the decimal representation in the database character set of the first character of char and it works for first char only.
Question-
If I would like to 'decimal representation in the database character set' for all the characters in one column of table, just not the first character.
For the below data -
158     .abc
159     -abc
The following query -
select id,ascii(name) from temp
158     46
159     45
only returns for first character in the name column.
I want for the whole name column data presentation.
How it can be done ? is there any other function or some work-around.
Any help would be really appreciated.
Thank you so much
Rama....

Answer 1

You could certainly build your own function to do this, something like
create or replace function ascii_string( str IN VARCHAR2 )
   RETURN VARCHAR2
IS
   returnVal VARCHAR2(4000) := ' ';
BEGIN
   FOR x IN 1..LENGTH(str)
   LOOP
      returnVal := returnVal || to_char( ASCII(SUBSTR(str, x)) ) || ' ';
   END LOOP;
   RETURN returnVal;
END;Justin
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