Charshift is a simple gem which adds functionality to the String class. It's primary function is to act on a given string, taking a fixnum parameter, then shifting each character in that string to a higher or lower ordinal position in that strings encoding. Charshift works with all of Ruby's included encodings and also works with devloper supplied 'custom encodings.' Simply provide an ordered set of characters as an optional parameter and charshift will work on the string using that set instead of the strings native encoding. Charshift also includes a '.get_encoding_length' method which returns the number of of characters which a given strings encoding contains. Finally, strings can be shifted in place using the '.charshift!' method.