I'm in a situation where I need the ASCII value of a character (for [Project Euler question #22](http://projecteuler.net/index.php?section=problems&id=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?