How to convert Char to Int in Haskell?

Question

I need to convert a Char to an Int in Haskell? For example:

a = '\x2' -- a == 2
          -- type of a should be Char
b = charToInt a -- b == 2
                -- type of b should be Int

How can I achieve this?

Answer 1

You can use the ord function to convert a character to its integer (ordinal) representation.

chr goes the other direction.

> ord '\x2'­
  => 2
> chr 97
  => 'a'
> ord (chr 42)
  => 42