I know in popular programming languages like java, c++, etc. there ways to turn strings and string inputs into an array of characters (ex. "Hello World" -> ["H","e","l","l","o"," ","W","o","r","l","d"] a representation of Hello World in Char[] form)

You could do it manually. I'm sure one of the SB experts will chime in with the best way, but hang on and I'll try and work it out.

So, a bit difficult fo find/figure out the best command for extracting the characters. It may be LEFT$. However, this here works except its converting the string value to integers. If you can change that part then voila!

I actually found a way too, what I didn't realize is that the pop method works on a regular string, not just arrays

Oh wow, I thought POP was only for arrays too. Interesting.

A string behaves like an array, that's why you can access to a specific character of a string by using []. Example: String$[3] BUT BE CAREFUL: Using array operators on string will cause a Memory Leak, which can only be fixed by restarting SB.

What happens in a memory leak?

Means that memory is misplaced and you can't access to it no matter what. Since you start with 8MB of memory available, you won't notice it if you run a small program with that bug. But if your program is big and running from quite some time, you will eventually get a Out of Memory error.

Oh