From: Yohanes Santoso <ysantoso-rubytalk@...>
Date: 2006-07-19T12:21:15+09:00
Subject: Re: Integer encoding challenge

"David Balmain" <dbalmain.ml@gmail.com> writes:

> On 7/19/06, Yohanes Santoso <ysantoso-rubytalk@dessyku.is-a-geek.org> wrote:
>> "David Balmain" <dbalmain.ml@gmail.com> writes:
>>
>> > Hey all,
>> >
>> > I need to come up with a way to encode an integer as a string so that
>> > it will sort correctly lexicographically. This is pretty easy when you
>> > have a fixed integer range but how do you do it with Ruby's BigNums?
>> > Any ideas?
>> >
>> > Cheers,
>> > Dave
>>
>> def encode_integer(num)
>>   "x"*num
>> end
>>
>> Do I win something?
>>
>> YS.
>
> Nice idea :P
> But how about negative numbers.

Same technique, but put them in different namespace.

YS.