From: Charles Oliver Nutter <charles.nutter@...>
Date: 2008-12-19T10:26:53+09:00
Subject: [ruby-core:20675] Re: [Feature #905] Add String.new(fixnum) to preallocate large buffer

Brian Ford wrote:
> Issue #905 has been updated by Brian Ford.
> 
> 
> In Rubinius, we have found it useful to have String.pattern(size, value) where value can be a fixnum or a string. The string created will be size characters where value is repeated. For example:
> 
> String.pattern(5, ?a)    # => "aaaaa"
> String.pattern(5, " ")   # => "    "
> String.pattern(5, "110") # => "11011"
> 
> Something like "ab" * 5 then becomes String.pattern("ab".size * 5, "ab").

Yeah, seems like a reasonably good idea. The string formats seem a 
little weird to me though...not what I'd expect. The analog with an 
array would be to accept another array as the fill value, which seems 
equally weird.