From: Joel VanderWerf <vjoel@...>
Date: 2009-07-21T05:39:20+09:00
Subject: Re: getting char from string as fixnum in 1.8 and 1.9

brabuhr@gmail.com wrote:
>> ruby -v -e 'p "foo"[2].ord'
> ruby 1.8.6 (2007-09-24 patchlevel 111) [i386-linux]
> -e:1: undefined method `ord' for 111:Fixnum (NoMethodError)
> 
>> cat foo.rb
> unless 0.respond_to?(:ord)
>   class Integer
>     def ord; self; end
>   end
> end
> 
>> ruby -v -rfoo -e 'p "foo"[2].ord'
> ruby 1.8.6 (2007-09-24 patchlevel 111) [i386-linux]
> 111
> 
> Still meets the constraint: "without adding methods to String"
> :-)

That seems like a pretty good approach, actually, and it happens to be 
what the snmp gem does (lib/ber.rb):

#
# Add ord method to Fixnum for forward compatibility with Ruby 1.9
#
if "a"[0].kind_of? Fixnum
     unless Fixnum.methods.include? :ord
         class Fixnum
             def ord; self; end
         end
     end
end


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