Re: Integer(nil) and checking numericality

Ruby
1

-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Thursday, March 09, 2006 8:19 PM
To: ruby-talk ML
Subject: Integer(nil) and checking numericality

Why does Integer(nil) return 0? Isn’t the point of Integer
to assert that the arg is actually an integer? (If we just
want a best guess, we can do ‘323aaadsfwefsd’.to_i or ‘’.to_i )/

Not exactly. It normally returns the value that YourObject#to_int would
return. However, it makes special checks for Floats, Numeric types and
Strings. In some cases, such as nil, it returns the value of .to_i
instead.

Below is the relevant source (from object.c) if you want the nitty
gritty.

Regards,

Dan

static VALUE
convert_type(val, tname, method, raise)
VALUE val;
const char *tname, *method;
int raise;
{
ID m;

m = rb_intern(method);
if (!rb_respond_to(val, m)) {
if (raise) {
    rb_raise(rb_eTypeError, "can't convert %s into %s",
	     NIL_P(val) ? "nil" :
	     val == Qtrue ? "true" :
	     val == Qfalse ? "false" :
	     rb_obj_classname(val),
	     tname);
}
else {
    return Qnil;
}
}
return rb_funcall(val, m, 0);

}

VALUE
rb_Integer(val)
VALUE val;
{
VALUE tmp;

switch (TYPE(val)) {
  case T_FLOAT:
if (RFLOAT(val)->value <= (double)FIXNUM_MAX
    && RFLOAT(val)->value >= (double)FIXNUM_MIN) {
    break;
}
return rb_dbl2big(RFLOAT(val)->value);

  case T_FIXNUM:
  case T_BIGNUM:
return val;

  case T_STRING:
return rb_str_to_inum(val, 0, Qtrue);

  default:
break;
}
tmp = convert_type(val, "Integer", "to_int", Qfalse);
if (NIL_P(tmp)) {
return rb_to_integer(val, "to_i");
}
return tmp;

}