From: "Matthew K. Williams" <matt@...>
Date: 2009-08-05T04:15:04+09:00
Subject: Re: Bizarre Range behavior

On Wed, 5 Aug 2009, Scott Briggs wrote:

> Can someone please explain this behavior in ruby (1.8.6p111):
>
>>> ("2"..."8").to_a
> => ["2", "3", "4", "5", "6", "7"]
>>> ("2".."8").to_a
> => ["2", "3", "4", "5", "6", "7", "8"]
>>> ("2".."9").to_a
> => ["2", "3", "4", "5", "6", "7", "8", "9"]
>>> ("2".."10").to_a
> => []
>>> ("2".."11").to_a
> => []
>>> ("1".."11").to_a
> => ["1", "2", "3", "4", "5", "6", "7", "8", "9", "10", "11"]
>

It's because you're using strings -- "11" comes before "2", hence the 
failure, because it's an invalid range, just as if you had (11 .. 2) is 
invalid.

Matt