One of Ruby's problems is that  it invites clever solutions, which are  
computationally costly and create undue amounts of garbage.

How about

?> "1234"[1].chr
=> "2"
 >>

Cheers,

Bob Schaaf


On Jun 26, 2009, at 4:55 PM, Peter Wu wrote:

> s = "1234" [0..1]
> p s      #> "12"
> p s.to_i    #> 12
> s = s[1]
> p s      #> 50
> p s.to_i    #> 50
>
> I can see the reason for this happening, but I don't want it to  
> happen.
>
> So how do I make it return 2 instead of 50?
> -- 
> Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.
>