From: Joel VanderWerf <vjoel@...>
Date: 2008-05-21T12:26:20+09:00
Subject: Re: Is there any good source for the logic behind some of the methods?

Michael W. Ryder wrote:
> I am trying to figure out why methods that seem to do the same thing 
> behave so differently.  For example Integer("0377") returns 255 as 
> expected for an octal number but "0377".to_i returns 377.  Or why 
> Integer("12e3") crashes while Float("12e3") returns 12000.0 as expected. 
>  I was hoping to find somewhere that tells when to use one or the other 
> method depending upon expected inputs.  It is very time consuming to 
> have to keep testing a method to find out it's limitations.

Guessing:

"0377".to_i returns 377 -- because #to_i has an default argument 
base=10, so in this case you have implicitly told #to_i to use decimal.

Integer("0377") returns 255 -- because there's no base specified, so it 
has to be determined from the string itself.

-- 
       vjoel : Joel VanderWerf : path berkeley edu : 510 665 3407