in the docs, the function "ascii(text)" is described as

returning "ASCII code of the first character of the argument"

(see
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.1/interactive/functions-string.html,
Table  9-6. "Other String Functions").

Presumably this should read "ASCII code of the first byte of the
argument",
which is what is returned when the argument is a multi-byte character
(although then with UTF-8 at least that might not necessarily be an
ASCII
code).

Ian Barwick

doc/src/sgml/func.sgml

 <!--
-$PostgreSQL: pgsql/doc/src/sgml/func.sgml,v 1.308 2006/03/03 22:02:07 momjian Exp $
+$PostgreSQL: pgsql/doc/src/sgml/func.sgml,v 1.309 2006/03/06 04:53:50 momjian Exp $
 PostgreSQL documentation
 -->
 
@@ -1249,7 +1249,7 @@ PostgreSQL documentation
       <row>
        <entry><literal><function>ascii</function>(<type>text</type>)</literal></entry>
        <entry><type>int</type></entry>
-       <entry><acronym>ASCII</acronym> code of the first character of the argument</entry>
+       <entry><acronym>ASCII</acronym> code of the first byte of the argument</entry>
        <entry><literal>ascii('x')</literal></entry>
        <entry><literal>120</literal></entry>
       </row>