ruby: unicode character decimal value to \uXXXX conversion? .ord method not working

Question

I'm trying to work with unicode characters, and the information provided by the string's .ord method doesn't help me. I'm used to working with codes like "\uXXXX".

ruby-1.9.3-p0 :119 > form[0]
=> "כ" 

ruby-1.9.3-p0 :120 > form[0].ord
=> 1499 
ruby-1.9.3-p0 :121 > puts "\u1499"
ᒙ

...

:-(

The values yielded by .ord seem to correspond to the 'decimal points' referred to here: http://www.i18nguy.com/unicode/hebrew.html

I don't know how to work with these values. How do I get the \uXXXX code from that character?

Thank you

Answer 1

The \u syntax uses hexadecimal, you're giving it a decimal value. You want:

>> "%4.4x" % form[o].ord
"05db"
>> puts "\u05db"
כ

Answer 2

mu is too short's answer is cool.

But, the simplest answer is:

'好'.ord.to_s(16)     # => '597d'