Did we omit these by mistake? They seem quite important even though in DFDL they could only be used for a single character (because we only allow single node return sequences). I have a data format I am modeling where there is a sort of ad-hoc encoding using 5 bits. The codepoints are values 0 - 31 assigned to the letters 0-7 A-H J-N P-Z (that's characters 0-7 and A-Z without I and O). The best I can do without functions that create characters from codepoint integers is a 32-leaf if-then-else tree statement on an inputValueCalc. This is ok, but it seems we should have a function to convert from a character to its codepoint as an integer, and back. 7.2 Functions to Assemble and Disassemble Strings Function Meaning fn:codepoints-to-string <http://www.w3.org/TR/xpath-functions/#func-codepoints-to-string> Creates an xs:string from a sequence of Unicode code points. fn:string-to-codepoints <http://www.w3.org/TR/xpath-functions/#func-string-to-codepoints> Returns the sequence of Unicode code points that constitute an xs:string. 7.2.1 fn:codepoints-to-string fn:codepoints-to-string($arg as xs:integer*) as xs:string Summary: Creates an xs:string from a sequence of [The Unicode Standard] <http://www.w3.org/TR/xpath-functions/#Unicode4> code points. Returns the zero-length string if $arg is the empty sequence. If any of the code points in $arg is not a legal XML character, an error is raised [err:FOCH0001 <http://www.w3.org/TR/xpath-functions/#ERRFOCH0001>]. 7.2.1.1 Examples - fn:codepoints-to-string((2309, 2358, 2378, 2325)) returns "अशॊक" 7.2.2 fn:string-to-codepoints fn:string-to-codepoints($arg as xs:string?) as xs:integer* Summary: Returns the sequence of [The Unicode Standard] <http://www.w3.org/TR/xpath-functions/#Unicode4> code points that constitute an xs:string. If $arg is a zero-length string or the empty sequence, the empty sequence is returned. 7.2.2.1 Examples - fn:string-to-codepoints("Thérèse") returns the sequence (84, 104, 233, 114, 232, 115, 101) Mike Beckerle | OGF DFDL Workgroup Co-Chair | Tresys Technology | www.tresys.com Please note: Contributions to the DFDL Workgroup's email discussions are subject to the OGF Intellectual Property Policy <http://www.ogf.org/About/abt_policies.php>