Convert month string to number

Ruby
1

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?

Thanks

2

Hi –

On Sun, 27 Jul 2008, Adgar M. wrote:

I wrote the following code:
when “Aug” then 8
^

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