## Syntax
```mermaid
%%{init: {
'theme': 'base',
'flowchart': { 'padding': '7', 'nodeSpacing': '20', 'rankSpacing': '20' },
'themeVariables': {
'fontSize': '11px',
'fontFamily': 'Arial'
}
}}%%
flowchart LR
Start((START)) --> BLOB_TO_TEXT[BLOB_TO_TEXT]:::quoted
BLOB_TO_TEXT --> End((END))
```
## Purpose
The `BLOB_TO_TEXT` SQL function maps a binary object (`blob`) into a sequence of characters in a specific character set, and then into the Invantive UniversalSQL Unicode representation. See also [[ASCII_TO_BLOB]].
Parameters:
- Input: a binary representation of a text in some encoding.
- Encoding: optional encoding as described in [[Character Set Encoding]]. Defaults to `UTF8`.
Returns: text in Unicode.
## Examples
`BLOB_TO_TEXT` maps the binary representation of an ASCII character text back to Unicode text:
```sql
select blob_to_text(ASCII_TO_BLOB('12345678'))
--------
12345678
```
`BLOB_TO_TEXT` maps the binary data retrieved using `read_file` to a Unicode interpreting the data as IBM860 character set:
```sql
select blob_to_text(file_contents, 'IBM860')
from read_file@os('c:\temp\readme-ibm860-set.txt')
--------
Text
```