RSA Key Question

[_Stud]

I want to hardcode a public RSA key into a Ruby script so there is no
reliance on an external '.pem' file. When I do that the object is of
type string and OpenSSL throws an error.

How can I get the "pub_key = OpenSSL:Key::RSA.new(<hardcoded public
key>)" to recognize the key?

Thanks,
_Stud