From: Michael Selig <redmine@...>
Date: 2008-10-12T08:23:21+09:00
Subject: [ruby-core:19299] [Feature #640] New Array#encoding_pack -> string method

Feature #640: New Array#encoding_pack -> string method
http://redmine.ruby-lang.org/issues/show/640

Author: Michael Selig
Status: Open, Priority: Normal
Category: M17N

Now that we have String#each_codepoint there are times when you want to pack an array of integer codepoints back to a string. With UTF-8 you can use:
  arr.pack("U*").force_encoding("UTF-8")
But I think it would be better to have a general method such as Array#encoding_pack(enc) -> string which efficiently handles any encoding, and is approximately a converse to String#each_codepoint.

A Ruby implementation might be:

class Array
  def encoding_pack(enc)
    s = "".force_encoding(enc)
    each { |cp|
      s << cp
    }
    s
  end
end


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