From: Horacio Sanson <hsanson@...>
Date: 2005-11-04T19:14:01+09:00
Subject: double byte string numbers to_int??


I have some date strings in japanese (utf-8 encoding) like:
平成１７年１０月１７日
using a regular expresion I can extract the year, month and day in separate variables but the I cannot convert them to Integer so I can create a Date object with the values, here is my script:

date_string = "平成１７年１０月１７日"
date_string =~ /平成(\s*\S+\s*)年(\s*\S+\s*)月(\s*\S+\s*)日/
y, m, d = $1, $2, $3
puts y +", " + m +", "+ d  =>１７, １０, １７

So I got the numbers in y, m, and d vars but then converting them to Integers gives me 0 as result
y.to_i => 0m.to_i =>0d.to_i =>0



Is there any way to convert the date string to a Date object easily??
regards,
Horacio