Convert string to int array in Ruby

Question

How do I convert a String: s = '23534' to an array as such: a = [2,3,5,3,4]

Is there a way to iterate over the chars in ruby and convert each of them to_i or even have the string be represented as a char array as in Java, and then convert all chars to_i

As you can see, I do not have a delimiter as such , in the String, all other answers I found on SO included a delimiting char.

Answer 1

A simple one liner would be:

s.each_char.map(&:to_i)
#=> [2, 3, 5, 3, 4]

If you want it to be error explicit if the string is not contained of just integers, you could do:

s.each_char.map { |c| Integer(c) }

This would raise an ArgumentError: invalid value for Integer(): if your string contained something else than integers. Otherwise for .to_i you would see zeros for characters.

Answer 2

Short and simple:

"23534".split('').map(&:to_i)

Explanation:

"23534".split('') # Returns an array with each character as a single element.

"23534".split('').map(&:to_i) # shortcut notation instead of writing down a full block, this is equivalent to the next line

"23534".split('').map{|item| item.to_i }