It appears the new String method called getbyte for Ruby 1.9 is not working? Results in an "Abort trap" message. ~/Dev $ macruby --version MacRuby version 0.5 (ruby 1.9.0) [universal-darwin10.0, x86_64] ~/Dev $ macruby -e ' "abc".getbyte(0);' Abort trap Paul Howson Warwick Qld Australia