ALPHA function

Syntax

ALPHA (expression)

Description

Use the ALPHA function to determine whether expression is an alphabetic or non-alphabetic string. If expression contains the characters a through z or A through Z, it evaluates to true and a value of 1 is returned. If expression contains any other character or an empty string, it evaluates to false and a value of 0 is returned. If expression evaluates to the null value, null is returned.

If NLS is enabled, the ALPHA function uses the characters in the Alphabetics field in the NLS.LC.CTYPE file. .

Example

PRINT "ALPHA('ABCDEFG') = ":ALPHA('ABCDEFG')
PRINT "ALPHA('abcdefg') = ":ALPHA('abcdefg')
PRINT "ALPHA('ABCDEFG.') = ":ALPHA('ABCDEFG.')
PRINT "ALPHA('SEE DICK') = ":ALPHA('SEE DICK')
PRINT "ALPHA('4 SCORE') = ":ALPHA('4 SCORE')
PRINT "ALPHA('') = ":ALPHA('')

This is the program output:

ALPHA('ABCDEFG') = 1
ALPHA('abcdefg') = 1
ALPHA('ABCDEFG.') = 0
ALPHA('SEE DICK') = 0
ALPHA('4 SCORE') = 0
ALPHA('') = 0