From: dblack@...
Date: 2006-12-28T02:19:49+09:00
Subject: Re: Newbie problem: String can't be coerced into Fixnum

Hi --

On Thu, 28 Dec 2006, Ja Bo wrote:

> I am brand new to Ruby and I would greatly appreciate any help you guys
> can provide!
>
> If this is not the correct place to post them please let me know where I
> should post these types of questions.
>
> This very short program is just supposed to take today's date using t =
> Time.now and calculating what year the user was born...
>
> Code:
> puts "How old are you?"
> age = gets.chomp
>
> puts name + " is " + age + " years old."
>
> t = Time.now
> born = t.year - age

The problem there is that t.year is an integer and age is a string.
You need to convert age:

   born = t.year - age.to_i   # to_i is "to integer"

> puts "You were probably born in " + born + "."

And don't forget you can use string interpolation:

   puts "You were probably born in #{born}."

Or even do it all at once:

   puts "You were probably born in #{Time.now.year - age.to_i}."

:-)


David

-- 
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