CHARTOROWID Function in Oracle SQL – PLSQL

The CHARTOROWID function in Oracle SQL / PLSQL is used to convert the CHAR, VARCHAR2, NCHAR or NVARCHAR2 data-type into ROWID type.

Syntax for using the CHARTOROWID function Oracle SQL / PLSQL is:

SELECT CHAROROWID (value)
FROM table_name;

• value is the value to be converted to ROWID
• The format of ROWID is BBBBBBB.RRRR.FFFFF

Here,
BBBBBBB is the block in the database file.
RRRR is the row in the block.
FFFFF is the database file.

Example:

Using CHARTOROWID function

Suppose we have a table named ‘employee’ as shown below:

If we write our query as:

SELECT *
FROM employee
WHERE ROWID = CHARTOROWID ('AAAPD2AABAAAS2aAAA');

Will return a unique row from employee table.