# Link o' the day: Ive been broken by Java.

Posted on March 11, 2013 by Tommy McGuire
From java.lang.Character#getNumericValue(char):
public static int getNumericValue(char ch)

Returns the int value that the specified Unicode character represents. For example, the character '\u216C' (the roman numeral fifty) will return an int with a value of 50.

The letters A-Z in their uppercase ('\u0041' through '\u005A'), lowercase ('\u0061' through '\u007A'), and full width variant ('\uFF21' through '\uFF3A' and '\uFF41' through '\uFF5A') forms have numeric values from 10 through 35. This is independent of the Unicode specification, which does not assign numeric values to these char values.

If the character does not have a numeric value, then -1 is returned. If the character has a numeric value that cannot be represented as a nonnegative integer (for example, a fractional value), then -2 is returned.

Note: This method cannot handle supplementary characters. To support all Unicode characters, including supplementary characters, use the getNumericValue(int) method.

Parameters:

ch - the character to be converted.

Returns:

the numeric value of the character, as a nonnegative int value; -2 if the character has a numeric value that is not a nonnegative integer; -1 if the character has no numeric value.

Since:

1.1