From: James Gray <james@...>
Date: 2008-12-21T05:32:08+09:00
Subject: [ruby-core:20731] Re: Working with binary strings in Ruby 1.9?

On Dec 20, 2008, at 2:01 PM, Joel VanderWerf wrote:

> James Gray wrote:
>>>   * data[10..20] to extract some bytes efficiently
>>  data.bytes.to_a[10..20]
>>>   * and use index and rindex to find bytes.
>>  data.bytes.to_a.index/rindex
>
> Is there a way to avoid #to_a?

Sure.  If the String has an encoding of ASCII-8BIT, as suggested in  
another response, normal indexing will work.  Those will give you  
Strings instead of Fixnums in 1.9, but unpack() can change that.  Note  
that you don't need to unpack() the entire data String, just the  
pieces you slice out of it.

James Edward Gray II