Bug in Regexp using extended characters

All of the following examples work as expected in IRB but fail in the rails console environment when the character is greater then 191. However, it works fine if you escape using the octal representation of the character Regexp.new(218.chr) will break but /\332/ is fine ( /\332/===218.chr => true )

Regexp.new('^'+65.chr+'$') === 65.chr => true Regexp.new('^'+218.chr+'$') === 218.chr => false

Regexp.new(65.chr) => /A/ c=191; Regexp.new('^'+c.chr+'$') === c.chr => true c=192; Regexp.new('^'+c.chr+'$') === c.chr false Regexp.new 190.chr /\276/ Regexp.new 193.chr RegexpError: premature end of regular expression: /Á/ from (irb):54:in initialize' from (irb):54:innew' from (irb):54

Regexp.new(218.chr) RegexpError: premature end of regular expression: /Ú/ from (irb):237:in initialize' from (irb):237:innew' from (irb):237 from :0

rails --version => Rails 2.1.0 RUBY_VERSION => "1.8.6" RUBY_RELEASE_DATE => "2008-08-11" RUBY_PLATFORM => "i686-darwin8.11.1"