Workaround for distance option issue starting from TUI

[rona1707]

Hello,

I got the following error by starting from TUI.

geotoad.rb:186:in 'GeoToad#getoptions': undefined method '=~' for an instance of Integer (NoMethodError)

So I'm not so familiar wih ruby, but at least I'm into software development. So I asked the AI:

This means Ruby is trying to use the =~ operator (used for regex matching) on an integer, but =~ only works on strings.

``

# distanceMax from command line can contain the unit
@distanceMax       = @option['distanceMax'].to_f
if @distanceMax == 0.0
  @distanceMax = 10
end
if @option['distanceMax'] =~ /(mi|km)/
  @useMetric     = ($1 == "km" || nil)
  # else leave usemetric unchanged
end

I'm not familiar with the type of distanceMax in the @options but it seems like some type error.
The recommended solution was to convert the @option['distanceMax'] to a string, which worked for me.

# distanceMax from command line can contain the unit
@distanceMax       = @option['distanceMax'].to_f
if @distanceMax == 0.0
  @distanceMax = 10
end
if @option['distanceMax'].to_s =~ /(mi|km)/
  @useMetric     = ($1 == "km" || nil)
  # else leave usemetric unchanged
end

[steve8x8]

Instead of an AI's guesses I'd rather like to know: What did you do to end up with this problem, i.e. what exactly did you enter into field (2)?
I happen to be unable to reproduce your issue.
Which ruby version are you using? (It's shown at the very beginning, before you press ENTER for the TUI.) What's your OS?

As a workaround you may edit the config.yaml file manually (keep a copy of its current state for analysis, make sure to nuke the password entry before sharing). You should have a line distanceMax: 22.22 (or whatever your preferred radius is) and another one usemetric: true (if you're measuring in km, not miles).
(That file, on a Linux system, would be stored in ~/.config/GeoToad/ - YMMV.)

[rona1707]

Hi,

I'm on a Windows 11 PC with the following Ruby-Version:

(===) GeoToad 3.34.1 (Ruby 3.4.4p34/2025-05-14 on x64-mingw-ucrt)

I'm using a batch file which pulls the latest master. After that I used to modify the the location and distance. I tried to add unit "km" or "mi" or leaving it empty and just used the plain number. I'm always getting the error.
At least the lines berfore in the main script let my take the guess tha somehow the type is involved, since there seems to be a conversion to_f (float)

@distanceMax = @option['distanceMax'].to_f

I'm also using another batch file with parameter passing to set the distance during main script call. This does not throw the error:

%RUBY% geotoad.rb -u <my_user> -p <my_pw> %1 -O -y %2 -N -o "<my_output_path>"

The YAML file on my machine is stored in .geotoad\ and contains the line "distanceMax: 10". I don't have the config option "usemetric" there.

[steve8x8]

I'm travelling without my laptop, thus I can only recommend to rename the config.yaml to get it out of the way, then start from square one.
Don't enter your credentials yet, start with the query details (search type, search center, distance) and jot down all actions. There might be a utility that logs all input and output, for Unix systems script would do the trick.
Send the full config.yaml file as soon as you get the error, I'll have a closer look when I'm back next week.
I hope that Ruby 3.4 hasn't introduced just another pitfall...

[rona1707]

Sry for the late response. So I messed around with some new config.yaml file. I took Berlin as location and I needed to enter my credentials for starting. As soon as I changed/entered the distance the issue started appearing. The only config-parameter which was added in the yaml-file was the distanceMax. It didn't matter if I was using a unit or just a plain number. The yaml config parameter just contained the number. The was just the usemetric: true added when using "km".

config_not_working.yaml
config_working.yaml

[steve8x8]

Thanks for providing the details. I'm completely lost - this behaviour doesn't make any sense to me, so I've got to go and find some Ruby 3.4.4 next. (The fix would likely be a one-liner, but it doesn't occur to me what would need fixing.)
Switching to another (lower) version of Ruby is not an option for you I guess? The config.yaml looks perfectly okay to me...

[steve8x8]

Having upgraded from 3.1 to 3.3 today, I managed to hit the issue as well.
What's interesting is that the TUI itself doesn't choke.
A quick fix is possible: in line 186 replace @option['distanceMax'] with @option['distanceMax'].to_s - I'll attempt to find out what exactly made the option change its data type and/or the interpretation by the code; a new version will need more insights, as I don't fully understand where/when the breakage happened.
Thanks a lot for your patience.

[rona1707]

No need to thank me. I got a working fix for me atm. Hopefully you can figure out whats happening. Thanks for your work here.