Converting string to ascii value

[Setra]

Hello all! I am having trouble converting a letter in a array of 
string to the ascii value. For example:

string[] stringarray[3];
stringarray[0] = "blahblahblah";
stringarray[1] = "a";
stringarray[3] = "5";

long y = to!long(stringarray[2]); // makes y the value 5
long x = to!long(stringarray[1]); // errors


This is not working properly. I want to get the ascii value of 
the characters.
In this case y should equal 97, b should equal 53. How do I do 
this properly?
Thanks!