syntax and example of CHARTOROWID function in oracle 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:

Employee_ID	Employee_Name	Salary	Department	Commission
101	Emp A	10000	Sales	10
102	Emp B	20000	IT	20
103	Emp C	28000	IT	20
104	Emp D	30000	Support	5
105	Emp E	32000	Sales	10
106	Emp F	40000	Sales	10
107	Emp G	12000	Sales	10
108	Emp H	12000	Sales	10

If we write our query as:

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

Will return a unique row from employee table.