title: How can I get the ascii characters from a string in Erlang
body: <p>I know i could get the ascii character from one letter just like this:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&gt;Letter = "a",
  &gt;hd(Letter).
  &gt;97
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>But I need something like this, where all the ascii characters are concatenated:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&gt;Letter = "abc",
  &gt;hd(Letter).
  &gt;979899
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Besides that, I know the following fuction "returns" a list with all the ascii characters, but I can not assign it to a variable.</p>
  
  <pre><code>&gt;io: format ( "~ w" [ "abc"]).
  &gt;[97,98,99]
  </code></pre>