This will return the string that starts at the given index
        @param strIndex - the index of the string we want to recover
        @return - string that we found starting at the specified '$' index

def recoverString(self, strIndex, withIndex=False):
        '''
        This will return the string that starts at the given index
        @param strIndex - the index of the string we want to recover
        @return - string that we found starting at the specified '$' index
        '''
        retNums = []
        indices = []
        
        #figure out the first hop backwards
        currIndex = strIndex
        prevChar = self.getCharAtIndex(currIndex)
        currIndex = self.getOccurrenceOfCharAtIndex(prevChar, currIndex)
        
        #while we haven't looped back to the start
        while currIndex != strIndex:
            #update the string
            retNums.append(prevChar)
            if withIndex:
                indices.append(currIndex)
        
            #figure out where to go from here
            prevChar = self.getCharAtIndex(currIndex)
            currIndex = self.getOccurrenceOfCharAtIndex(prevChar, currIndex)
        
        for i in xrange(0, self.vcLen):
            if strIndex < self.endIndex[i]:
                retNums.append(i)
                break
                
        if withIndex:
            indices.append(strIndex)
        
        #reverse the numbers, convert to characters, and join them in to a single sequence
        ret = ''.join(self.numToChar[retNums[::-1]])
        
        #return what we found
        if withIndex:
            return (ret, indices[::-1])
        else:
            return ret