From: Jan Friedrich <janfri.rubyforge@...>
Date: 2008-11-13T00:07:21+09:00
Subject: Re: Convert text string i.e 'Peter' into integer ID

Todd Benson <caduceass@gmail.com> wrote:
> Unless I'm missing something here, strings are just numbers in order.
> Why encode/encrypt?
You're right:
 'Peter'.to_i(36) # => 42681699

But you will become problems with larger strings if your dbms doesn't 
have integers with arbitrary length.

> Most db's should handle natural keys.
This is right. I don't adress the db part in my post.
 
> If absolutely necessary to store as number strings (I can't see why),
> look at #pack and #unpack.
This would also not work for larger strings (see above).

HTH,
Jan