byteslice

Byte ReferenceâIf passed a single Fixnum, returns a substring of one byte at that position. If passed two Fixnum objects, returns a substring starting at the offset given by the first, and a length given by the second. If given a Range, a substring containing bytes at offsets given by the range is returned. In all three cases, if an offset is negative, it is counted from the end of str. Returns nil if the initial offset falls outside the string, the length is negative, or the beginning of the range is greater than the end. The encoding of the resulted string keeps original encoding.

"hello".byteslice(1)     #=> "e"
"hello".byteslice(-1)    #=> "o"
"hello".byteslice(1, 2)  #=> "el"
"\x80\u3042".byteslice(1, 3) #=> "\u3042"
"\x03\u3042\xff".byteslice(1..3) #=> "\u3042"