Ruby: How to convert a string to boolean

Question

I have a value that will be one of four things: boolean true, boolean false, the string \"true\", or the string \"false\". I want to convert the string to a boolean if it i

Answer 1

A gem like https://rubygems.org/gems/to_bool can be used, but it can easily be written in one line using a regex or ternary.

regex example:

boolean = (var.to_s =~ /^true$/i) == 0

ternary example:

boolean = var.to_s.eql?('true') ? true : false

The advantage to the regex method is that regular expressions are flexible and can match a wide variety of patterns. For example, if you suspect that var could be any of "True", "False", 'T', 'F', 't', or 'f', then you can modify the regex:

boolean = (var.to_s =~ /^[Tt].*$/i) == 0