[PD] splitting a symbol into individual characters & ascii

[Thomas Ouellet Fredericks]

I am trying to make a pair of abstractions for serial communication:
1) pd2ascii: converts any message into ascii codes
2) ascii2pd: converts ascii codes into any message

ascii2pd is done and working, but pd2ascii is difficult to implement because 
there is no efficient way to split a symbol into it's individual elements as 
in converting
symbol bob
into
list b o b

I tried:
1) ascii library but it is not maintained anymore and has some bugs.

2) ascseq but it is scheduled so structures like the following are 
impossible:

[AAAA<
|
[t b a]
|       \
|         \
[13<   [ascseq 0]
|         /
[print]

It will output "65,13,65,65,65" instead of the expected "65,65,65,65,13"

3) Toxy but it suffers the same limitations as ascseq

Anyone have any suggestions for try number 4?

Tom