From: oinkoink+unet@... (Bret Jolly)
Date: 2003-03-21T10:00:09+09:00
Subject: Re: Newbie question: 9/5=1 ?

Thomas Jollans <nospam@jollans.com> wrote in message news:<b5cvpg$vj7$04$1@news.t-online.com>...
> while learning ruby i wanted to program a simple fahrenheit to celsius 
> converter. for that i need 9/5 to be 1,8 (and not 1). how do i do that 
> in ruby?

   One way is to require the 'mathn' standard library.
irb(main):001:0> require 'mathn'
true
irb(main):002:0> f = 63
63
irb(main):003:0> c = (5/9)*(f - 32)
155/9
irb(main):004:0> c.to_f
17.22222222

  'mathn' gives you rationals, complex numbers, and matrices, and allows a
more natural notation for rationals than the 'rational' library does (so
5/9 is the rational number five-ninths).  I always require mathn!

Regards, Bret
Bret Jolly (Jou Lii Bair)
http://www.rexx.com/~oinkoink/