[Ruby] What's the value of a[0] and a[1]?

Question

a = "3 Is the answer 4 Is not".to_i
b = a[1] * a[0] + a[1]
puts b*b

Answer 1

According to docs

1) str.to_i returns the result of interpreting leading characters in *str* as an integer. So value of *a* in your case would be 3
https://ruby-doc.org/core-3.0.3/String.html#method-i-to_i

2) The bracket operator gives you the nth bit of the binary representation.
Binary representation of 3 is 0011, so as Rik Wittkopp pointed out, a[0] would be 1, a[1] would also be 1 and rest 0.
http://ruby-doc.org/core-2.1.2/Fixnum.html#method-i-5B-5D

Hence the resulting value in *b* is 2 and the output 4.

Answer 2

a[0] = 1
a[1] = 1

I don't know why.

Anything above a[2] = 0

Interesting question.
Hopefully you can get a better answer than mine.

Google, here I come

Answer 3

Arsenic
Awesome 😁👍