From: William James <w_a_x_man@...>
Date: 2007-01-08T16:45:05+09:00
Subject: Re: Calculating roman numerals


Gerald Ebberink wrote:
> On Wed, 03 Jan 2007 06:35:02 +0900, Shiloh Madsen wrote:
>
> > Ok, I'm having trouble with another exercise in this book. It has
> > asked me to write a program that will calculate the old school roman
> > numeral value for a given modern number (up to the thousands). To
> > clarify, old school roman numerals didn't do the subtraction thing, so
> > 4 is IIII, nine is VIIII, etc. I've played around with a few options
> > using division, loops and modulus, but can't seem to get my brain
> > around the problem...any suggestions?
> >
> > Shiloh
>
> Many people have answered, but since I'm a beginner I would like to have
> some comments on the following. Which I think is pretty ruby-esque
>
> ans=0
> roman="XVIII"
> {"X"=>10,"V"=>5,"I"=>1}.each_pair do |letter, number|ans+=roman.count(letter)*number end;ans
>
>
> Kind regards,
> Gerald

The original poster asked for a way to translate from modern numerals
to roman numerals.  You're doing the opposite.

Your method will convert old-school roman numerals, but it
won't work for "XIV".