Chr$ Function

Returns a String containing the character associated with the specified character code. The dollar sign suffix ($) explicitly indicates that this function returns a String type.

Syntax

Chr$(charcode)

Parameters

• charcode: Required. Long value that identifies a character. The valid range for charcode is 0-255. For values outside this range, an error occurs.

Return Value

Returns a String containing the single character corresponding to the specified character code. For charcode values 0-127, this corresponds to the ASCII character set. For values 128-255, this corresponds to the extended ASCII or ANSI character set based on the system's code page.

Remarks

• The Chr$ function always returns a String, while Chr (without $) can return a Variant.
• Valid range: 0-255 (Error 5 "Invalid procedure call or argument" for values outside range).
• Chr$(0) returns a null character (vbNullChar).
• Chr$(13) returns carriage return (vbCr).
• Chr$(10) returns line feed (vbLf).
• Chr$(9) returns tab character (vbTab).
• Values 0-31 are non-printable control characters.
• Values 32-126 are standard printable ASCII characters.
• Values 127-255 depend on the system code page (often Windows-1252 in VB6).
• The inverse function is Asc, which returns the numeric character code of a character.
• For better performance when you know the result is a string, use Chr$ instead of Chr.

Common Character Codes

Typical Uses

1. Line breaks - Insert carriage returns and line feeds in strings
2. Special characters - Add tabs, quotes, and other special characters
3. Character generation - Build strings from character codes
4. Alphabet generation - Create sequences of characters programmatically
5. Tab-separated values - Format data with tab delimiters
6. Quote escaping - Insert quotes within strings
7. File formatting - Create properly formatted text files

Basic Examples

' Example 1: Get character from code
Dim ch As String
ch = Chr$(65)  ' Returns "A"

' Example 2: Lowercase letter
Dim lower As String
lower = Chr$(97)  ' Returns "a"

' Example 3: Special character
Dim space As String
space = Chr$(32)  ' Returns " "

' Example 4: Line break
Dim msg As String
msg = "Line 1" & Chr$(13) & Chr$(10) & "Line 2"

Common Patterns

Multi-line Strings

Function CreateMultiLine() As String
    Dim result As String
    result = "First Line" & Chr$(13) & Chr$(10)
    result = result & "Second Line" & Chr$(13) & Chr$(10)
    result = result & "Third Line"
    CreateMultiLine = result
End Function

Tab-Separated Values

Function CreateTSV(col1 As String, col2 As String, col3 As String) As String
    CreateTSV = col1 & Chr$(9) & col2 & Chr$(9) & col3
End Function

Generate Alphabet

Function GenerateAlphabet() As String
    Dim i As Integer
    Dim result As String
    For i = 65 To 90
        result = result & Chr$(i)
    Next i
    GenerateAlphabet = result  ' Returns "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ"
End Function

Quote in String

Function AddQuotes(text As String) As String
    AddQuotes = Chr$(34) & text & Chr$(34)
End Function

CSV Field with Quotes

Function QuoteCSVField(field As String) As String
    ' Replace " with ""
    Dim quoted As String
    quoted = Replace(field, Chr$(34), Chr$(34) & Chr$(34))
    QuoteCSVField = Chr$(34) & quoted & Chr$(34)
End Function

Null-Terminated String

Function CreateNullTerminated(text As String) As String
    CreateNullTerminated = text & Chr$(0)
End Function

Password Mask

Function MaskPassword(length As Integer) As String
    Dim i As Integer
    Dim result As String
    For i = 1 To length
        result = result & Chr$(42)  ' Asterisk
    Next i
    MaskPassword = result
End Function

Character Range Check

Function IsUpperCase(ch As String) As Boolean
    If Len(ch) <> 1 Then Exit Function
    Dim code As Integer
    code = Asc(ch)
    IsUpperCase = (code >= 65 And code <= 90)
End Function

Build Character Set

Function GetDigitCharacters() As String
    Dim i As Integer
    Dim result As String
    For i = 48 To 57  ' ASCII codes for 0-9
        result = result & Chr$(i)
    Next i
    GetDigitCharacters = result  ' Returns "0123456789"
End Function

Format Output with Alignment

Function AlignRight(text As String, width As Integer) As String
    Dim padding As Integer
    Dim result As String
    padding = width - Len(text)
    If padding > 0 Then
        Dim i As Integer
        For i = 1 To padding
            result = result & Chr$(32)  ' Space
        Next i
    End If
    AlignRight = result & text
End Function

Advanced Examples

Format Report Header

Function CreateReportHeader() As String
    Dim header As String
    header = "Name" & Chr$(9) & "Age" & Chr$(9) & "City" & Chr$(13) & Chr$(10)
    header = header & String$(40, Chr$(45))  ' Underline with dashes
    CreateReportHeader = header
End Function

Parse Character Codes

Function DecodeCharCodes(codes() As Integer) As String
    Dim i As Integer
    Dim result As String
    For i = LBound(codes) To UBound(codes)
        result = result & Chr$(codes(i))
    Next i
    DecodeCharCodes = result
End Function

Create Box Drawing

Function CreateBox(width As Integer, height As Integer) As String
    Dim result As String
    Dim i As Integer
    ' Top line
    result = String$(width, Chr$(45)) & Chr$(13) & Chr$(10)
    ' Middle lines
    For i = 1 To height - 2
        result = result & Chr$(124) & Space$(width - 2) & Chr$(124) & Chr$(13) & Chr$(10)
    Next i
    ' Bottom line
    result = result & String$(width, Chr$(45))
    CreateBox = result
End Function

Differences from Chr

Related Functions

• Chr: Returns character as Variant instead of String
• ChrB$: Returns byte character for double-byte character sets
• ChrW$: Returns Unicode character
• Asc: Returns character code for a character (inverse of Chr$)
• AscB: Returns byte value of first byte in string
• AscW: Returns Unicode character code

Error Handling

Function SafeChr(code As Long) As String
    On Error Resume Next
    SafeChr = Chr$(code)
    If Err.Number <> 0 Then
        SafeChr = ""
        Err.Clear
    End If
End Function

Performance Considerations

• Chr$ is slightly more efficient than Chr because it avoids Variant overhead
• For building strings from many characters, consider using a buffer or String$ function
• Concatenating many Chr$ calls can be slow; use arrays and Join for better performance

Limitations

• Limited to character codes 0-255 (use ChrW$ for full Unicode support)
• Character interpretation depends on system code page
• Does not validate that the resulting character is printable
• No direct support for multi-byte characters (use ChrB$ for DBCS)