ord(): the ASCII value of the first character in a given string

Get the byte value of the first character

ord() returns the numeric value of the first byte in a string. This works directly for single-byte ASCII characters; a multibyte UTF-8 character can occupy more than one byte.

$value = ord('A');
echo $value; // 65
For ASCII characters, the first byte matches the corresponding ASCII code. For example: 
echo ord('&');
The output is here 
38
Use chr() to convert a byte value back to a character

Example 1: Getting ASCII Value of Special Characters

echo ord('$');  // Output: 36
echo ord('@');  // Output: 64

Example 2: Converting First Character of a String to ASCII

$str = 'Hello';
echo ord($str);  // Output: 72 (ASCII value of 'H')

The printable ASCII range is 32–126. The following loop renders printable characters and their byte values; it deliberately excludes control bytes. 
for ($i = 32; $i <= 126; $i++) {
    $character = chr($i);
    echo htmlspecialchars($character, ENT_QUOTES, 'UTF-8') . ' = ' . ord($character) . "<br>";
}

For HTML output, use htmlspecialchars() so characters such as < and & are displayed instead of interpreted as markup.

= 32
! = 33
" = 34
# = 35
$ = 36
% = 37
& = 38
' = 39
( = 40
) = 41
* = 42
+ = 43
, = 44
- = 45
. = 46
/ = 47
0 = 48
1 = 49
2 = 50
3 = 51
4 = 52
5 = 53
6 = 54
7 = 55
8 = 56
9 = 57
: = 58
; = 59
< = 60
= = 61
> = 62
? = 63
@ = 64
A = 65
B = 66
C = 67
D = 68
E = 69
F = 70
G = 71
H = 72
I = 73
J = 74
K = 75
L = 76
M = 77
N = 78
O = 79
P = 80
Q = 81
R = 82
S = 83
T = 84
U = 85
V = 86
W = 87
X = 88
Y = 89
Z = 90
[ = 91
\ = 92
] = 93
^ = 94
_ = 95
` = 96
a = 97
b = 98
c = 99
d = 100
e = 101
f = 102
g = 103
h = 104
i = 105
j = 106
k = 107
l = 108
m = 109
n = 110
o = 111
p = 112
q = 113
r = 114
s = 115
t = 116
u = 117
v = 118
w = 119
x = 120
y = 121
z = 122
{ = 123
| = 124
} = 125
~ = 126

UTF-8 note: ord() reads the first byte, not a Unicode code point. Use a Unicode-aware approach when working with multibyte characters.


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