From: Gavin Kistner <gavin.kistner@...>
Date: 2006-10-19T08:41:58+09:00
Subject: Re: Bitwise operations

From: Rob Lee
> I can't understand how to access the first byte from 
> a string (a series of 8 bit bytes I believe). There don't seem to be
any 
> bit-shift operators in Ruby for a string - could anybody 
> advise how I go about this ?

Strings in Ruby are, as you say, series of 8-bit bytes. The String#[]
operator when called with a single integer index returns the numeric
value of the requested byte:

irb(main):001:0> s = "\xf7\x23"
=> "\367#"
irb(main):002:0> s[0]
=> 247
irb(main):003:0> s[0].to_s(16)
=> "f7"