From: Brian Mitchell <binary42@...>
Date: 2009-08-13T07:06:49+09:00
Subject: [ruby-core:24896] Re: IDEA: Shortcut syntax for binary strings?

On Wed, Aug 12, 2009 at 17:58, Gregory Brown<gregory.t.brown@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 12, 2009 at 4:53 PM, James Gray<james@grayproductions.net> wrote:
>>
>>> bin_data = %b{71 73 70} �� # decimal values of bytes
>>> bin_data.encoding �� �� �� �� # => #<Encoding:ASCII-8BIT>
>>
>> Interesting idea. ��I wish there was a way to keep that and Greg's simple
>> ASCII usage both���
>
> Hmm... yeah, I'm out of my depth here. ��But that would be nice.

How about treating them like literals similar to erlang's binary syntax?

  bin_data = %b{ "GIF" 0xDE 0xAD 0xBE 0xEF  0b101010 }

Which is like shorthand for a smart "auto-packed" array:

  bin_data = ["GIF", 0xDE, 0xAD, 0xBE, 0xEF, 0b101010].pack("aCCCCC")

Thoughts?

Brian.