diff --git a/src/libcore/char.rs b/src/libcore/char.rs
index 4677f0b523f..ad492c81bd3 100644
--- a/src/libcore/char.rs
+++ b/src/libcore/char.rs
@@ -16,6 +16,8 @@
 #![stable(feature = "core_char", since = "1.2.0")]
 
 use char_private::is_printable;
+use convert::TryFrom;
+use fmt;
 use iter::FusedIterator;
 use mem::transmute;
 
@@ -122,12 +124,7 @@ pub const MAX: char = '\u{10ffff}';
 #[inline]
 #[stable(feature = "rust1", since = "1.0.0")]
 pub fn from_u32(i: u32) -> Option<char> {
-    // catch out-of-bounds and surrogates
-    if (i > MAX as u32) || (i >= 0xD800 && i <= 0xDFFF) {
-        None
-    } else {
-        Some(unsafe { from_u32_unchecked(i) })
-    }
+    char::try_from(i).ok()
 }
 
 /// Converts a `u32` to a `char`, ignoring validity.
@@ -175,6 +172,66 @@ pub unsafe fn from_u32_unchecked(i: u32) -> char {
     transmute(i)
 }
 
+#[stable(feature = "char_convert", since = "1.13.0")]
+impl From<char> for u32 {
+    #[inline]
+    fn from(c: char) -> Self {
+        c as u32
+    }
+}
+
+/// Maps a byte in 0x00...0xFF to a `char` whose code point has the same value, in U+0000 to U+00FF.
+///
+/// Unicode is designed such that this effectively decodes bytes
+/// with the character encoding that IANA calls ISO-8859-1.
+/// This encoding is compatible with ASCII.
+///
+/// Note that this is different from ISO/IEC 8859-1 a.k.a. ISO 8859-1 (with one less hypen),
+/// which leaves some "blanks", byte values that are not assigned to any character.
+/// ISO-8859-1 (the IANA one) assigns them to the C0 and C1 control codes.
+///
+/// Note that this is *also* different from Windows-1252 a.k.a. code page 1252,
+/// which is a superset ISO/IEC 8859-1 that assigns some (not all!) blanks
+/// to punctuation and various Latin characters.
+///
+/// To confuse things further, [on the Web](https://encoding.spec.whatwg.org/)
+/// `ascii`, `iso-8859-1`, and `windows-1252` are all aliases
+/// for a superset of Windows-1252 that fills the remaining blanks with corresponding
+/// C0 and C1 control codes.
+#[stable(feature = "char_convert", since = "1.13.0")]
+impl From<u8> for char {
+    #[inline]
+    fn from(i: u8) -> Self {
+        i as char
+    }
+}
+
+#[unstable(feature = "try_from", issue = "33417")]
+impl TryFrom<u32> for char {
+    type Err = CharTryFromError;
+
+    #[inline]
+    fn try_from(i: u32) -> Result<Self, Self::Err> {
+        if (i > MAX as u32) || (i >= 0xD800 && i <= 0xDFFF) {
+            Err(CharTryFromError(()))
+        } else {
+            Ok(unsafe { from_u32_unchecked(i) })
+        }
+    }
+}
+
+/// The error type returned when a conversion from u32 to char fails.
+#[unstable(feature = "try_from", issue = "33417")]
+#[derive(Copy, Clone, Debug, PartialEq, Eq)]
+pub struct CharTryFromError(());
+
+#[unstable(feature = "try_from", issue = "33417")]
+impl fmt::Display for CharTryFromError {
+    fn fmt(&self, f: &mut fmt::Formatter) -> fmt::Result {
+        "converted integer out of range for `char`".fmt(f)
+    }
+}
+
 /// Converts a digit in the given radix to a `char`.
 ///
 /// A 'radix' here is sometimes also called a 'base'. A radix of two
diff --git a/src/libcoretest/char.rs b/src/libcoretest/char.rs
index 333503d7389..199437a431e 100644
--- a/src/libcoretest/char.rs
+++ b/src/libcoretest/char.rs
@@ -9,6 +9,24 @@
 // except according to those terms.
 
 use std::char;
+use std::convert::TryFrom;
+
+#[test]
+fn test_convert() {
+    assert_eq!(u32::from('a'), 0x61);
+    assert_eq!(char::from(b'\0'), '\0');
+    assert_eq!(char::from(b'a'), 'a');
+    assert_eq!(char::from(b'\xFF'), '\u{FF}');
+    assert_eq!(char::try_from(0_u32), Ok('\0'));
+    assert_eq!(char::try_from(0x61_u32), Ok('a'));
+    assert_eq!(char::try_from(0xD7FF_u32), Ok('\u{D7FF}'));
+    assert!(char::try_from(0xD800_u32).is_err());
+    assert!(char::try_from(0xDFFF_u32).is_err());
+    assert_eq!(char::try_from(0xE000_u32), Ok('\u{E000}'));
+    assert_eq!(char::try_from(0x10FFFF_u32), Ok('\u{10FFFF}'));
+    assert!(char::try_from(0x110000_u32).is_err());
+    assert!(char::try_from(0xFFFF_FFFF_u32).is_err());
+}
 
 #[test]
 fn test_is_lowercase() {
diff --git a/src/librustc_unicode/char.rs b/src/librustc_unicode/char.rs
index c2b7d7045dd..5a0c27d9c60 100644
--- a/src/librustc_unicode/char.rs
+++ b/src/librustc_unicode/char.rs
@@ -40,6 +40,8 @@ pub use core::char::{MAX, from_digit, from_u32, from_u32_unchecked};
 pub use core::char::{EncodeUtf16, EncodeUtf8, EscapeDebug, EscapeDefault, EscapeUnicode};
 
 // unstable reexports
+#[unstable(feature = "try_from", issue = "33417")]
+pub use core::char::CharTryFromError;
 #[unstable(feature = "decode_utf8", issue = "33906")]
 pub use core::char::{DecodeUtf8, decode_utf8};
 #[unstable(feature = "unicode", issue = "27783")]
diff --git a/src/librustc_unicode/lib.rs b/src/librustc_unicode/lib.rs
index b812c262ac1..65bd717e01a 100644
--- a/src/librustc_unicode/lib.rs
+++ b/src/librustc_unicode/lib.rs
@@ -38,6 +38,7 @@
 #![feature(fused)]
 #![feature(lang_items)]
 #![feature(staged_api)]
+#![feature(try_from)]
 #![feature(unicode)]
 
 mod tables;
diff --git a/src/libstd/error.rs b/src/libstd/error.rs
index ab537f39bf9..16290620010 100644
--- a/src/libstd/error.rs
+++ b/src/libstd/error.rs
@@ -302,6 +302,13 @@ impl<'a, T: ?Sized + Reflect> Error for cell::BorrowMutError<'a, T> {
     }
 }
 
+#[unstable(feature = "try_from", issue = "33417")]
+impl Error for char::CharTryFromError {
+    fn description(&self) -> &str {
+        "converted integer out of range for `char`"
+    }
+}
+
 // copied from any.rs
 impl Error + 'static {
     /// Returns true if the boxed type is the same as `T`