Read Integer within a String

Question

I need to somehow read an integer within a string. The string will be as follows;

GAME_SWITCH(476)

And I need to read the 476 part. Note, it won't be 476 each time, but it will be "GAME_SWITCH(...)" each time. I've tried using the .delete methods to delete "GAME_SWITCH(" and ")", but that has no effect for some reason. I just want the "476" which I can then convert to an integer.

Furthermore, is there also a way to check if the string adheres to those rules? if the string is just "foobar" it returns false?

I am using Ruby 1.8.1

Thanks a lot!

Answer 1

You can solve the problem with regular expressions for example:

if m = str.match(/^GAME_SWITCH\((\d+)\)$/)
  m[1].to_i
else
  false
end

Answer 2

Try something like this

my_string.scan(/\d+/)[0].to_i