title: Get character from a string in Scala but keep the result as a string?
body: <p>Imagine that I wanted to take the characters from a string in Scala but have the toInt conversion to behave as it would on a string instead of as on a character. </p>
  
  <p>To illustrate the following code behaves like so:</p>
  
  <pre><code>"0".toInt // results in 0
  "000".charAt(0).toInt // results in 48
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I'd like a version of the second line that would also result in 0. I have a solution like the following:</p>
  
  <pre><code>"000".charAt(0).toString.toInt // results in 0
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>But I wonder if there is a more direct or better way?</p>