Safe integer parsing in Ruby

Question

I have a string, say \'123\', and I want to convert it to the integer 123.

I know you can simply do some_string.to_i, but that

Answer 1

Another unexpected behavior with the accepted solution (with 1.8, 1.9 is ok):

>> Integer(:foobar)
=> 26017
>> Integer(:yikes)
=> 26025

so if you're not sure what is being passed in, make sure you add a .to_s.