ord()

ord(c)

Returns: int · Added in v3.0 · Updated March 13, 2026 · Built-in Functions

built-in string unicode character

The ord function returns an integer representing the Unicode code point of a single-character string. It is the inverse of chr, which converts a code point back to a character. This function is essential for working with Unicode text, as it lets you inspect the numeric value underlying any character.

Syntax

ord(c)

Parameters

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
`c`	`str`	—	A string containing exactly one character. Position-only parameter.

Returns: An integer representing the Unicode code point of the character.

Examples

Basic ASCII characters

# Each ASCII character has a sequential code point
print(ord('A'))
# 65

print(ord('a'))
# 97

print(ord('0'))
# 48

Special characters

# Space character
print(ord(' '))
# 32

# Newline
print(ord('\n'))
# 10

# Tab
print(ord('\t'))
# 9

Unicode characters beyond ASCII

# Euro sign
print(ord('€'))
# 8364

# Emoji (Unicode varies by Python version)
print(ord('😀'))
# 128512

# Cyrillic letter
print(ord('Я'))
# 1071

# Chinese character
print(ord('中'))
# 20013

Converting and manipulating code points

# Get the next character
char = 'A'
next_char = chr(ord(char) + 1)
print(next_char)
# B

# Get previous character
prev_char = chr(ord('d') - 1)
print(prev_char)
# c

# Check if character is uppercase
char = 'P'
is_upper = ord(char) >= 65 and ord(char) <= 90
print(is_upper)
# True

Common Patterns

Caesar cipher

A classic use case for ord is implementing a simple Caesar cipher:

def caesar_cipher(text, shift):
    result = ""
    for char in text:
        if char.isalpha():
            base = ord('A') if char.isupper() else ord('a')
            shifted = (ord(char) - base + shift) % 26 + base
            result += chr(shifted)
        else:
            result += char
    return result

# Encrypt with shift of 3
print(caesar_cipher("HELLO", 3))
# KHOOR

# Decrypt by shifting backwards
print(caesar_cipher("KHOOR", -3))
# HELLO

Character classification without string methods

def is_digit(char):
    return ord('0') <= ord(char) <= ord('9')

def is_uppercase(char):
    return ord('A') <= ord(char) <= ord('Z')

def is_lowercase(char):
    return ord('a') <= ord(char) <= ord('z')

print(is_digit('5'))
# True
print(is_uppercase('G'))
# True
print(is_lowercase('g'))
# True

Finding the maximum character in a string

Because characters are compared by their Unicode values, you can use ord to find characters by their “alphabetic” position:

def max_char(text):
    max_ord = 0
    max_char = ''
    for char in text:
        if ord(char) > max_ord:
            max_ord = ord(char)
            max_char = char
    return max_char

print(max_char("hello"))
# o

print(max_char("python"))
# y

Creating a character frequency map

def char_frequency(text):
    freq = {}
    for char in text:
        freq[char] = freq.get(char, 0) + 1
    return freq

# Find most common character
text = "hello world"
freq = char_frequency(text)
most_common = max(freq, key=lambda c: ord(c))
print(most_common)
# l

Errors

TypeError for wrong argument type

# String of length > 1 raises TypeError
ord('ab')
# TypeError: ord() expected a character, but string of length 2 found

# Non-string raises TypeError
ord(65)
# TypeError: ord() expected string of length 1, but int found

# Empty string raises TypeError
ord('')
# TypeError: ord() expected a character, but string of length 0 found