From: Artur Merke <merke@...>
Date: 2003-11-19T18:52:17+09:00
Subject: Re: to_i

Hi,

you don't really want to compare ruby with c! BTW, what you have overlooked
is the fact, that c doesn't have a nil return value (0 is only a nil value
in connection with pointers, not integers), so Kernighan & Richie havn't
had another option then to return 0, but in ruby you have a nil value, and
I'm pretty sure ;-), K&R would have chosen to return nil in ruby's to_i
method.

Artur


On Tue, 18 Nov 2003, Josef 'Jupp' SCHUGT wrote:
> Hi!
>
> * Artur ; 2003-11-17, 14:20 UTC:
> > IMO, it has to do with the principle of least surprise, and it is a
> > BIG surprise to get
> > "hello".to_i -> 0
>
> Let me quote Kernighan & Richie, Programming in C (naive
> implementation of atoi):
>
> int atoi(char s[])
> {
>     int i, n;
>
>     n = 0;
>     for (i = 0; s[i] >= '0' && s[i] <= '9'; ++i)
>         n = 10 * n + (s[i] - '0');
>     return n;
> }
>
> Assuming this sample implementation it is not at all surprising that
> atoi returns 0 if the argument string does not start with a 'digit'.
> Given Ruby's C heritage it is no surprise that to_i behaves the same
> as atoi.
>
> Josef 'Jupp' Schugt
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