From: Kevin Smith <sent@...>
Date: 2000-12-21T05:31:40+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:7793] Re: Next amusing problem: talking integers

>Meanwhile -- well, am I allowed to do the cowardly thing, and
>pose this as a puzzle, without actually having done it yet?  I did
>do it in Perl, but am curious to see ideas for it in Ruby.
>
>Namely......
>
>Input:   123456
>Output:  "one-hundred twenty-three thousand four-hundred fifty-six"
>
>etc.  

My first shot at a Ruby solution can be viewed 
at:
  www.qualitycode.com/towords.rb

I decided to handle negative numbers reasonably, 
and with a range into the trillions. I also 
changed the problem definition slightly, to avoid 
dashes in 'one-hundred' but to keep them in 
'twenty-three' (because that's how I learned it 
in school). And I put commas between billions, 
millions, thousands, etc.

I make absolutely no claims about performance. My 
goal was to get it working quickly, and to have 
simple, maintainable code. If I spent more time 
on it, I would probably try to do it as a 
Module/mix-in (a feature I haven't played with 
yet).

Kevin