right then
its it possible to convert a string containing one thing only, to a char
variable, if so how

im makeing a hash table for a project at school and i want to be able to
enter in someones name into the program and there info will be placed into
the table depending on the characters in there name, i can convert
characters into there ascii numbers and i can break the name down into
single letter strings, but u cant turn the strings into there ascii
numbers, any ideas? im useing the wincrt unit if turbo pascal for windows
if that helps.

If C is a character and S is a string then C := S[1] returns the first
character, C := S[2] returns the second and so forth. S[0] contains a count of
the number of characters in the string.

' '      -> 0
'A'..'Z' -> 1..26
'0'..'9' -> 27..37
'.','-'  -> 38,39

Var I : Integer;
    L : Longint;
    S : String[7]; (* ?? *)
Begin
  (* first pad S to with trailing blanks if shorter, not written here *)
  L := 0; I := 1;
  Repeat
    L := L * 40;
    Case S[I] of
    ' ' : ;
    'A'..'Z' : L := L+Ord(S[I])-$40;
    '0'..'9' : L := L+Ord(S[I])-$yyy (* i am too tired to calc that
*)    
    '.'      : L := L+38;
    '-'      : L := L+39;
    Inc(I);
  Until (I > 7); (* ??? *)
  result := L;
End;

Longints are excellent for sorting and searching.

you can't convert a string to a char.  Once the variable has
been declared, you can't very well go and change it
midstream.  But you can take a letter from a string a store
in a char variable.  Or you can access the string variable
as a char type array.

You could get really fancy and do it with pointers, but
why?  

Bob Lewis <aa...@erols.com> schrieb im Beitrag
<350C6C0C.9348...@erols.com>...

--
Arsne von Wyss
avonw...@gmx.net

In that case you would probably just access the string as a
character array.  Remember that strings have a length byte
at position 0 (the size of the array, so to speak).  If you
need to get the ascii value of character 5, you could do:

if str_var[0] > #4 then  {checks the length...if that's
necessary}
        num := Ord(str_var[5]);