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 contains persian digits like ١۲"

Is there any function to encode it to english, and if the string contain such number to convert it like end results will be :

str1 = "1212"
str2 = "1212"
str3 = "some string that contains persian digits like 12"

Thanks

Answer 1

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"

Answer 2

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.