Getting the numeric value of a string in javascript

If you're looking for an integer version of a string that contains a number, then like so:

var string = '3';
var stringNum = parseInt( string ); // 3

If you're looking for the number of characters in a string, then:

var string = 'hello test one two';
var stringLength = string.length; // 18

EDIT: One more thing to call out. If you run parseInt() that isn't a number, you'll get NaN as a result.

As it's not exactly clear what you want, here is a function that gives you an Array of the char codes of the string

function strToCharCode(str) {
    return Array.prototype.map.call(str, function(e){return e.charCodeAt(0);});
}

strToCharCode("what is my numeric value");
/*
[
    119, 104,  97, 116,  32, 105, 115,  32,
    109, 121,  32, 110, 117, 109, 101, 114,
    105,  99,  32, 118,  97, 108, 117, 101
]
*/

Please note that internally JavaScript uses UCS-2, which is similar to UTF-16, using 16-bit encoding (not 8 bit) so non-latin characters may have values up to 65535

I'm thinking he wants a numeric value of a String so that he can later change it back into the same word

maybe from String to Binary to Numeric and vice-versa ?