How to convert 1 to “first”, 2 to “second”, and so on, in Ruby?

Question

Is there a built-in method in Ruby to support this?

Answer 1

if you are in Rails, you can convert 1 to 1st, 2 to 2nd, and so on, using ordinalize.

Example:

1.ordinalize # => "1st"
2.ordinalize # => "2nd"
3.ordinalize # => "3rd"
...
9.ordinalize # => "9th"
...
1000.ordinalize # => "1000th"

And if you want commas in large numbers:

number_with_delimiter(1000, :delimiter => ',') + 1000.ordinal # => "1,000th"

in ruby you do not have this method but you can add your own in Integer class like this.

class Integer
  def ordinalize
    case self%10
    when 1
      return "#{self}st"
    when 2
      return "#{self}nd"
    when 3
      return "#{self}rd"
    else
      return "#{self}th"
    end
  end
end


22.ordinalize #=> "22nd"