Thanks, interesting way of looking at the problem.

Also you could change the WHERE clause to

WHERE N <= DATALENGTH(CountryName) instead of using the SUBSTRING comparison.

The example given in Books Online uses a WHILE loop for a similar problem.. It would be nice to know the real world speed differences in these 2 approaches for this particular dataset.

SET TEXTSIZE 0

SET NOCOUNT ON

-- Create the variables for the current character string position

-- and for the character string.

DECLARE @position int, @string char(15)

-- Initialize the variables.

SET @position = 1

SET @string = 'Du monde entier'

WHILE @position <= DATALENGTH(@string)

BEGIN

SELECT ASCII(SUBSTRING(@string, @position, 1)),

CHAR(ASCII(SUBSTRING(@string, @position, 1)))

SET @position = @position + 1

END

SET NOCOUNT OFF

GO