This function lets you accomplish some very difficult tasks with ease. If your server is case sensitive, you can still find all names entered in uppercase only. You can find comments containing extended ASCII characters. You can find which comments have formatting tabs and line feeds.
You can search on eight different classes of ASCII characters. You can search for their existence or absence in a string. Or you can pass null for the "don't care" classes.
The code is simple so you may redefine your own special categories such as "valid XML extended chars". The performance is acceptable for development and debugging conversions and upgrades.
This is really a swiss army knife in performing tasks that are nearly impossible otherwise.
Just create the function. The script at the end of the function's code will display how every ASCII character is categorized.
