Safe integer parsing in Ruby

This might work:

i.to_i if i.match(/^\d+$/)

Ruby has this functionality built in:

Integer('1001')                                    # => 1001  
Integer('1001 nights')  
# ArgumentError: invalid value for Integer: "1001 nights"  

As noted in answer by Joseph Pecoraro, you might want to watch for strings that are valid non-decimal numbers, such as those starting with 0x for hex and 0b for binary, and potentially more tricky numbers starting with zero that will be parsed as octal.

Ruby 1.9.2 added optional second argument for radix so above issue can be avoided:

Integer('23')                                     # => 23
Integer('0x23')                                   # => 35
Integer('023')                                    # => 19
Integer('0x23', 10)
# => #<ArgumentError: invalid value for Integer: "0x23">
Integer('023', 10)                                # => 23