From: MonkeeSage <MonkeeSage@...>
Date: 2006-09-24T21:50:17+09:00
Subject: Re: Help w/ Codegolf Total Triangles- reading input

Drew Olson wrote:
> GAH! Why is it printing the ascii character value? Do I have a logic
> flaw in the way I'm reading the input? Is there a better way to read the
> input? Should I just tear my hair out?

Well firstly, because as others have mentioned, you were using #each,
so you were getting an array populated with strings:

["1", "1 2", "1 3 2", "1 4 2 1"]
        ^
...and the 1-index of the 1-item of the array is a space (" ") -- ascii
ordinal 32.

But why doesn't ruby give you the space -- why the ordinal? Because in
1.8, indexing a string by a single integer gives you the ascii ordinal
for that character of the string (this changed in 1.9, now it gives you
the character and you have to explicitly use #ord to get the ordinal).
So, 'a'[0] => 97. If you ever need to get around that, just make the
indexer into a range: 'a'[0,1] => a, 'a'[0..0] => a.

Regards,
Jordan