From: Mathieu Bouchard <matju@...>
Date: 2002-01-13T02:30:13+09:00
Subject: Re: I/O gets and integers


On Sun, 13 Jan 2002, linas wrote:
> Whenever i use gets to retireve user input, it always retrieves it as a
> string. Is there anyway that it can be retireved as an integer (or real
> number)?

There's no method that does exactly that, because instead you combine gets
with a method that does the kind of conversion you want. You see, the
number could be written in different numbering systems (2,8,10,16,64),
with or without a prefix, etc.

You can use Integer(gets) to get an integer written Ruby-style (decimal
integers not starting with zero; zero reserved to indicate other numbering
systems).

You can use Float(gets) to get a floating-point number. This is called a
"Real" number in Pascal, but this is extremely misleading: all it is is
scientific notation with a fixed number of digits no matter how big the
number is.

If you want to accept both Integers and Floats, you can do
this: (temp=gets; Integer(temp) rescue Float(temp)) but there is a gotcha
when mixing integers and floats carelessly (integer divided by integer
gives an integer), so if you want you can append .to_f to that to make
sure every result is a Float even when it was written as an Integer.

________________________________________________________________
Mathieu Bouchard                   http://hostname.2y.net/~matju