From: Artur Merke <merke@...>
Date: 2003-11-17T10:24:58+09:00
Subject: Re: to_i

>     IMHO this is a struggle between convenience and cleanness.  I guess
> Matz decided for convenience in this case, maybe because in most cases
> using 0 is ok.  If you want to do correct input checking you do
> /^[+-]?\d+$/ =~ foo anyway.
>
IMO, it has to do with the principle of least surprise, and it is a BIG
surprise to get
"hello".to_i -> 0
I think this should be viewed more general (not just for the methods to_i,
to_f etc.). If the application of a method makes no sense for an input,
then a nil value makes more sense as a return value (and shouldn't
surprise anybody), then an arbitrary ambiguous value.

Artur