Hi,
I tried to track the following problem - well at least to me it seems that 
there's a problem somewhere - into ruby 1.6.2-preview sources 
without clear success. 

Can someone please give me a hint ?

$ ruby -v
ruby 1.6.2 (2000-10-18) [sparc-netbsd1.4.1]
$ echo 'p Integer("zzzzzzzz")' | ruby
-:1:in `Integer': invalid literal for Integer: zzzzzzzz (ArgumentError)
        from -:1
$ echo 'p Integer("zzzzzzzzz")' | ruby
0
$