Ruby: How to convert a string to binary and write it to file

Question

The data is a UTF-8 string: ``` data = 'BZh91AY&SY\x94$|\x0e\x00\x00\x00\x81\x00\x03$ \x00!\x9ah3M\x13<]\xc9\x14\xe1BBP\x91\xf08' ``` I have tried `File.open("data.bz2", "wb").write(data.unpack('a*'))` with all kinds of variations for unpack put have had no success. I just get the string in the file not the UTF-8 encoded binary data in the string.

Accepted Answer

Try using double quotes:

```
data = "BZh91AY&SY\x94$|\x0e\x00\x00\x00\x81\x00\x03"
```

Then do as sepp2k suggested.

Ruby: How to convert a string to binary and write it to file

Solution

Problem