I doubt whether people have changed - although as an oldie it sure is tempting to think so. It's probably more like the opportunities are greater eg. the internet,...

Thanks everyone.

Thank you Lowell,

I was looking for UNICODE(SUBSTRING(@Col,@col_pos,1))>=160, but I see now, it's not quite correct as some of these high ascii characters have unicode values less than 160.  eg. 127...