From: Jano Svitok <jan.svitok@...>
Date: 2008-04-23T22:35:09+09:00
Subject: Re: Negative nums

On Tue, Apr 22, 2008 at 4:17 PM, Tim Wolak <twolak@sktydev.com> wrote:
> Morning all,
>
>  I sent an email on this yesterday and needed to give you guys some example
>  code.  Below is some code I have for grabbing the numbers I need from lines
>  in a text file that we receive via FTP.  My big concern is the negative
>  numbers for accounts which are indicated by a position in the file where 0
>  is a postive number and ­ is a negative number. What is the best way to get
>  my account balance and make it a negative number?  Iım not sure Iım doing it
>  the correct way in this script.

what about:

>  class Info
>   attr_reader :acct, :money
>
>   def initialize(filename)
>     @acct = File.new(filename, "r")
>   end
>     f = Info.new("Balances20080415.txt")
>       act = f.acct
>         act.each do |list|
>           #covert me to a string
>         futbal = list.to_s
>         #Pull accounts
>         office = futbal[22..24]
>         if office == "RPT"
>           next
>         else
>           acctnum = futbal[24..28]
>         end
>         #Pull Liquidating values
>           lv = futbal[217..231]
>         #Pull LV Indicator
            is_negative = futbal[215..215] == '-'
            value = lv.to_f/1000
            value = -value if is_negative
            puts acctnum," ",value
>  end

or (though not very readable)

value = futbal[217..231].to_f / ((futbal[215..215] == '-') ? -1000 : 1000)

or a bit better:

value = futbal[217..231].to_f / 1000 * ((futbal[215..215] == '-') ? -1 : 1)