# Help concatenating letters and numbers **URL:** \ **Category:** Rails\ **Created:** [November 12, 2008, 12:22am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/help-concatenating-letters-and-numbers/153089 "2008-11-12T00:22:45Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 2\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![The\_N](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/edb3f5/32.png) [@The\_N](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/The_N)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2008, 12:22am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/help-concatenating-letters-and-numbers/153089/1 "2008-11-12T00:22:45Z")
Hello… I need to do the following in rails: I have a string with the following composition: AAA-BBB-2008-000001 The first to groups are strings, named @string1 and @string2. The third is the year, (reflected using Time.now.strftime("%Y")) and the last part is an integer, @integer1. I’m using a PostgreSQL 8 database and I need to put that composition on a string.I have no problem with the string variables and the year. The catch here is the integer, it increases everytime I do a new registry and, when a new year comes, it resets to 1. More over, I need the integer to be 6-digit.I don’t know how to do that, but I know the logic of th increments: When the integer is 10, I need it to be 000010; when it’s 100, 000100; 1000 =\> 001000 and so on. And let’s suppose one of our string changes, for example. It also must resets the integer to 1. As you can see, it’s a unique composition. As the id from the database keeps increasing, that number won’t work on me. I need to set it apart, without using that number. And that count must be kept, whenever I log in to my app. Is it hard to do this stuff? Greetings… The N. ---
**Author:** ![The\_N](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/edb3f5/32.png) [@The\_N](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/The_N)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2008, 3:02pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/help-concatenating-letters-and-numbers/153089/2 "2008-11-12T15:02:19Z")
you can use sprintf formatting for the integer: @integer1 = 10 int\_formatted = “%06d” % @integer1 # returns “000010” I don’t understand the other requirements enough to help further