UTF-8 string in Ruby

I have the following module:

# encoding: utf-8
module RandomNameModule

    def self.doesNothing(word)
        str = ""
        word.codepoints{|val|
            str << val.chr
        }
        return str
    end
end

and the following test:

# encoding: utf-8
require 'test/unit'
require '../src/RandomNameModule.rb'

class RandomNameTests < Test::Unit::TestCase
    def testDoesNothing
        sor开发者_StackOverflow中文版ted = WordSort.word_sort("£$&")
        assert_equal("£$&", sorted)
    end
end

When I run the test I get an assertion failure:

<"£$&"> expected but was
<"\xA3$&">.

This is because "£".codepoints{|x| x.chr} returns the value \xA3

how can I make this return £

The Integer#chr method used in your example seems to default to ASCII if you don't explicitely tell it what encoding to use:

def self.doesNothing(word)
  str = ""
  word.codepoints { |val| str << val.chr("utf-8") }
  str
end

Also, using String#each_char instead of String#codepoints works fine as well:

def self.doesNothing(word)
  str = ""
  word.each_char { |val| str << val }
  str
end