How to translate Arabic/Persian numbers to english using Ruby?

Question

How can I convert some string that has Arabic/Persian number to English ?

Like if I have :

str1 = \"١۲١۲\"
str2 = \"12١۲\"
str3 = \"some string that con         


        

Answer 1

Since this is not encoding but translation and assuming your problem limits to only those numbers (0-9), you could write a simple 1-to-1 mapping from arabic to english, something like this:

  arabic_to_english = {
  '٩' => 9,
  '٨' => 8,
  '٧' => 7,
  '٦' => 6,
  '٥' => 5,
  '٤' => 4,
  '٣' => 3,
  '٢' => 2,
  '١' => 1,
  '٠' => 0
}

And you just call the hash whenever needed:

   arabic_to_english['٧']

Better if you extract this into a function of course.

Answer 2

For these one on one transformations the tr-method is very convenient and fast. It has a mutating counterpart in tr!

#encoding: utf-8

str1 = "١۲١۲"
str2 = "12١۲"
str3 = "some string that contains persian digits like ١۲"

[str1, str2, str3].each{|str| str.tr!('۰١۲۳۴۵۶۷۸۹','0123456789')}

p str1, str2, str3
#"1212"
#"1212"
#"some string that contains persian digits like 12"