Numbers to Strings and Back Again
Learn to Program, Third Edition — by Chris Pine (24 / 116)
Published in
2 min readSep 23, 2021
👈 Chapter 4 Conversions and Input | TOC | Let Me Tell You a Secret 👉
To get the string version of an object, you simply write .to_s after it like this:
1: var1 = 2
2: var2 = "5"
3: puts var1.to_s + var2<= 25
Similarly, appending .to_i gives the integer version of an object, and .to_f gives the float version. Let’s look at what these methods do (and don’t do) a little more closely:
1: var1 = 2
2: var2 = "5"
3: puts var1.to_s + var2
4: puts var1 + var2.to_i<= 25
7
Notice that, even after you got the string version of var1 by calling to_s, var1 was always pointing at 2 and never at “2”. Unless you explicitly reassign var1 (which requires an = sign), it’ll continue to point at 2 for the life of the program.
Let’s try some more interesting (and a few just plain weird) conversions:
1: puts "15".to_f
2: puts "99.999".to_f
3: puts "99.999".to_i
4: puts ""
5: puts "5 is my favorite number!".to_i
6: puts "Who asked you about 5 or whatever?".to_i
7: puts "Your mama did.".to_f
8: puts ""
9: puts "stringy".to_s
10: puts 3.to_i<= 15.0
99.999
99
5
0
0.0
stringy
3
