comp.lang.ruby

David A. Black

7/26/2008 11:08:00 PM

Hi --

On Sun, 27 Jul 2008, Adgar Marks wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I use linux OS. I would like to convert a file with the folloing format:
> -rw-r--r-- 1 student student 11289 26. Jul 22:41 listing.txt
>
> into FileName, Year, Month, Day
>
> In order to do this, i would like to convert the month string from "Jul"
> in to the number 7.
>
> I wrote the following code:
>
> def ConvertMonthToNumber(MonthStr)
> case MonthStr
> when "Jan" then 1
> when "Feb" then 2
> when "Mar" then 3
> when "Apr" then 4
> when "May" then 5
> when "Jun" then 6
> when "Jul" then 7
> when "Aug" then 8
> when "Sep" then 9
> when "Okt" then 10
> when "Nov" then 11
> when "Dec" then 12
> end
> end
>
> when i run this code, i get the following error:
> SortList.rb:7: formal argument cannot be a constant
> def ConvertMonthToNumber(MonthStr)
> ^
>
> My questions are:
> 1. Is there already a function that does in Ruby?
> 2. How to correct this bug?

1. require 'date'
Date::ABBR_MONTHNAMES.index("Jun") # 6

2. Use a variable instead of a constant as your parameter. Variables
start with lowercase letters or _ (underscore).


David

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