Oracle CONVERT

The Oracle CONVERT() function converts a string from one character set to another.

Syntax

The following shows the syntax of the Oracle CONVERT() function:

CONVERT(string_expression,to_data_set[,from_data_set]);

Arguments

The Oracle CONVERT() function accepts three arguments:

1) string_expression

is the string whose character set should be converted.

2) to_data_set

is the name of the character set to which the string_expression is converted to.

3) from_data_set

is the name of character set which is used to store the string_expression in the database. This argument is optional and its default value is the database character set.

Return value

The CONVERT() function returns a string in the converted character set.

Examples

The following example converts a string from ANSI to UTF8:

SELECT
  CONVERT( 'ABC', 'utf8', 'us7ascii' )
FROM
  dual;

Here is the result:

'ABC'

The following statement illustrates how to convert the character set of a string from Latin-1 to ASCII.

SELECT
  CONVERT( 'Ä Ê Í', 'US7ASCII', 'WE8ISO8859P1' )
FROM
  DUAL;

The result is:

'A E I'

Note that the result is the same as converting the string from the WE8ISO8859P1 character set to the US7ASCII character set.

Remarks

The following table shows the common character sets:

To get all the valid character sets, you query them from the V$NLS_VALID_VALUES view as follows:

SELECT
  value
FROM
  V$NLS_VALID_VALUES
WHERE
  parameter = 'CHARACTERSET' AND ISDEPRECATED = 'FALSE'
ORDER BY
  value;

In this tutorial, you have learned how to use the Oracle CONVERT() function to convert a string from a character set to another.