C language and Basic do no store strings in the same manner. Because in
Basic you can insert characters in the middle of string the STRING data
type
is not continous.

The characters in strings are bytes. You can use the ASC function to get
the value of the string characters and move them into an arrary something
like the following

Dim packstring
Dim PackArray(100) as byte

for stringcount = 1 to len(MyString)

PackArray(stringcount) = Asc(mid(MyString,stringcount,1))

next stringcount

I think ther maybe a Basic statement to do this automatically.

If you are willing to start your Byte array with a lower bound of zero, then
yes, there is...

Dim PackString As String
Dim PackArray() As Byte
PackString = "Whatever text you would like"
PackString = StrConv(PackString, vbFromUnicode)

Rick