How to get the ASCII value of a character in Haskell? I've tried to use the ord
function in GHCi, based on what I read here bug the the error message:
Not in scope: `ord'
For example:
GHCi, version 6.12.1: http://www.haskell.org/ghc/ :? for help
Loading package ghc-prim ... linking ... done.
Loading package integer-gmp ... linking ... done.
Loading package base ... linking ... done.
Loading package ffi-1.0 ... linking ... done.
Prelude> ord 'a'
<interactive>:1:0: Not in scope: `ord'
Prelude>
What am I doing wrong?
As Travis Brown indicated in a comment, you have to import the ord
function from the module Data.Char
:
import Data.Char (ord)
main = print (ord 'a')
Only the Prelude
module is loaded by default, all other modules have to be imported explicitly.
You can also use fromEnum
. (defined in Enum
class, from Prelude.)
Prelude> :i Char
data Char = GHC.Types.C# GHC.Prim.Char# -- Defined in `GHC.Types'
instance Enum Char -- Defined in `GHC.Enum'
instance Eq Char -- Defined in `GHC.Classes'
...
So you can use fromEnum
and toEnum
, which uses the ASCII code as the Int value.
Prelude> fromEnum 'A'
65
Prelude> fromEnum 'a'
97
Prelude> toEnum 9 :: Char
'\t'
Prelude> toEnum 100 :: Char
'd'