Rails: How to downcase non-English string?

Question

How could I downcase a non-English string in Ruby on Rails 3 ?

str = "Привет"    # Russian  puts str[0].ord   # => 1055 str.downcase! puts str[0].ord   # => 1055 (Should be 1087) 

I want it to work in Ruby 1.8.7 as well as Ruby 1.9.2.

Answer 1

str = "Привет" str.mb_chars.downcase.to_s #=> "привет"