C Program to Print ASCII Value of a Character

In C programming, a character variable holds its ASCII value (an integer between 0 and 127) rather than the character itself. This program demonstrates how to reveal that underlying integer value.

Concept Overview

ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) is a character encoding standard. When you use the %d format specifier with a char variable in printf(), C prints the numeric ASCII code associated with that character.

Program

#include <stdio.h>

int main() {
    char ch;

    printf("Enter a character: ");
    scanf("%c", &ch);

    // %c displays the actual character
    // %d displays the integer ASCII value
    printf("ASCII Value of the character is: %d\n", ch);

    return 0;
}

Sample Output

Enter a character: A
ASCII Value of the character is: 65

Explanation

• The variable `ch` is declared as a `char` type to store the user's input.
• The `scanf("%c", &ch)` function captures a single character from the keyboard.
• Inside the `printf` function, we use the `%d` format specifier. This tells C to treat the character as an integer.
• Every character has a unique code; for example, 'A' is 65, 'a' is 97, and '0' is 48.