From: Gregory Seidman <gsslist+ruby@...>
Date: 2008-09-10T23:10:01+09:00
Subject: Re: Please explain that

On Wed, Sep 10, 2008 at 10:24:18PM +0900, Jan Pilz wrote:
> Can you please explain this behaviour ?
>
> irb(main):017:0> 071.to_s
> => "57"
> irb(main):018:0> 71.to_s
> => "71"
>
> Why is an octal Number converted to decimal when outputted as String ?

Check the docs for Fixnum#to_s. It takes a base argument, which defaults to
10. Also, I'll point out that a number isn't octal or decimal or anything
else. It can be represented in whatever base, but it's just a number.

--Greg