On Sep 26, 2006, at 12:15 PM, Newbie wrote:

> Why not a 1-character string?

Even if String#[index] returned a 1-character string, you would still
want a way to extract individual code-points/bytes.  Right now you have:

	s[i..i]		# substring starting at position i of length 1
	s[i]	 	# code-point at position i

I think in future Ruby versions it is going to be something like:

	s[i..i]		# substring starting at position i of length 1
	s[i]		# same as s[i..i]
	s.byte(i)	# code-point at position i

I'm guessing at String#byte.  I know I read something about that but I
couldn't find a reference right away.

Anyway, as I understand it, the concept of 'character' or even  
'position'
is pretty complicated in a fully i18n world (such as with Unicode).

Gary Wright