On Fri, 27 Oct 2000 02:41:34 +0900 Mark Slagell wrote: > Maybe you want "zzzzzzzzz".to_i, which returns 0. > > to_i ignores leading/following characters that aren't in the 0-9 range > and so never causes errors. Integer() is interested in a base radix, > like "0x", and raises an exception if it sees a bad one. That is to say, > it is probably right to complain about a zexadecimal number. :-) I expected 'Integer("zzzzzzzzz")' to raise an exception and was surprised to get a 0 without exception. I'm waiting for the compilation of matz's little patch which will surely fix this... Thanks for you quick answers, and fix!