Getting an ASCII character code in Ruby using `?` (question mark) fails

I'm in a situation where I need the ASCII value of a character (for Project Euler question #22, if you want to get specific) and I'm running into an issue.

Being new to ruby, I googled it, and found that ? was the way to go: ?A or whatever. But when I incorporate it into my code, the result of that statement is the string "A"—no character code. Same issue with [0] and slice(0), both of which should theoretically return the ASCII code.

The only thing I can think of is that this is a ruby version issue. I'm using 1.9.1-p0, having upgraded from 1.8.6 this afternoon. I cheated a little going from a working version of Ruby, in the same directory, I figured I probably already had the files that don't come bundled with the .zip file, so I didn't download them.

So why exactly are all my ASCII codes being turned into actual characters?

Solution 1:

Ruby before 1.9 treated characters somewhat inconsistently. ?a and "a"[0] would return an integer representing the character's ASCII value (which was usually not the behavior people were looking for), but in practical use characters would normally be represented by a one-character string. In Ruby 1.9, characters are never mysteriously turned into integers. If you want to get a character's ASCII value, you can use the ord method, like ?a.ord (which returns 97).

Solution 2:

How about

"a"[0].ord

for 1.8/1.9 portability.

Solution 3:

Ruby Programming/ASCII

In previous ruby version before 1.9, you can use question-mark syntax.

?a

After 1.9, we use ord instead.

'a'.ord

Solution 4:

For 1.8 and 1.9

?a.class == String ? ?a.ord : ?a

"a".class == String ? "a".ord : "a"[0]

Solution 5:

Found the solution. "string".ord returns the ascii code of s. Looks like the methods I had found are broken in the 1.9 series of ruby.