$KCODE = "u" # Specify Unicode UTF-8, or start Ruby with -Ku option require "jcode" # Load multibyte character support mb = "2\303\2272=4" # This is "2×2=4" with a Unicode multiplication sign mb.each_byte do |c| # Iterate through the bytes of the string. print c, " " # c is Fixnum end # Outputs "50 195 151 50 61 52 "