NCHAR()

Returns the Unicode character with the specified integer code, as defined by the Unicode standard.

Signature

NCHAR ( integer_expression )

Parameters

  • integer_expression — When the collation of the database does not contain the Supplementary Character (SC) flag, this is a positive integer from 0 through 65535 (0 through 0xFFFF). If a value outside this range is specified, NULL is returned. For more information about supplementary characters, see Collation and Unicode Support.

Examples

SELECT NCHAR(9731) AS snowman;
snowman
-------
☃

Run against SQL Server 16.0.4265.3 on 2026-09-13. This is the output we got, not the documentation’s.

Available on

  • SQL Server 2017 and later
  • Azure SQL Database
  • Azure SQL Managed Instance
  • Azure Synapse Analytics
  • Analytics Platform System (PDW)
  • Fabric SQL database

Signature and description adapted from the Microsoft SQL documentation, used under the CC BY 4.0. SQL Server and Azure are trademarks of the Microsoft group of companies. This page is not affiliated with Microsoft.