End of Life Ruby 3.0 has reached end of life and gets no more fixes. Switch to Ruby 4.0 →

instance method

String#chars

str.chars → an_array

static VALUE
rb_str_chars(VALUE str)
{
    VALUE ary = WANTARRAY("chars", rb_str_strlen(str));
    return rb_str_enumerate_chars(str, ary);
}

Returns an array of characters in str. This is a shorthand for str.each_char.to_a.

If a block is given, which is a deprecated form, works the same as each_char.

See also #center #chomp #casecmp? #chomp! also in 4.1 · 4.0 · 3.4 · 3.3 · 3.2 · 3.1