A spike implementing part of this nifty Ruby feature request: https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/20196

kernel.rb

# frozen_string_literal: true

module Kernel
  def Binary(string, exception: true)
    hex = string.b
    hex.gsub!(/#[^#]*$\R*/, '')
    hex.gsub!(/"[^"]*"/) do |quotes|
      quotes[1..-2].unpack1('H*')
    end
    hex.delete!("\s\t")

    if hex.match?(/\H/)
      return unless exception

      invalid_chars = hex.scan(/\H/).to_set.join
      raise ArgumentError,
            "invalid non-hex chars for Binary(): #{invalid_chars.inspect}"
    end 
        
    [hex].pack('H*').freeze
  end   
end     
        
string = <<-BINARY
  89 "PNG" 0d0a1a0a # PNG header
  0000000d          # Length = 13 bytes
  "IHDR"            # IHDR chunk
  00000060          # Width = 96px
  00000060          # Height = 96px
  08 06             # 8bpp RGBA
  00 00 00          # deflate / no filter / non-interlaced}
BINARY  
        
binary = Binary(string)
pp string: binary, encoding: binary.encoding, frozen: binary.frozen?
# => {:string=>"\x89PNG\r\n" + "\x1A\n" + "\x00\x00\x00\rIHDR\x00\x00\x00`\x00\x00\x00`\b\x06\x00\x00\x00",
#    :encoding=>#<Encoding:ASCII-8BIT>,
#    :frozen=>true}