>>>>> "D" == David Alan Black <dblack / candle.superlink.net> writes:

>> p ACollection.new("a-c,g-h,k,x-y,aa-ac").expanded

D> I'm not sure what you mean about the alphabetic examples.  (That
D> would raise an argument error in the framework I've written, which
D> expects only integers.)

 Your example was an ICollection, mine is an ACollection

pigeon% ruby -e 'p "a-c,g-h,k,x-y,aa-ac".gsub("-", "..")'
"a..c,g..h,k,x..y,aa..ac"
pigeon% 

 and you see a Range object


Guy Decoux