From: Gregory Brown <gregory.t.brown@...>
Date: 2009-08-13T07:25:33+09:00
Subject: [ruby-core:24898] Re: IDEA: Shortcut syntax for binary strings?

On Wed, Aug 12, 2009 at 6:17 PM, Gary Wright<gwtmp01@mac.com> wrote:
>
> On Aug 12, 2009, at 4:53 PM, James Gray wrote:
>>>
>>> It seems like it is just a quirk of the GIF format that the header
>>> for a GIF file consists of the ascii codes for 'G', 'I', 'F'
>>
>> PNG and PDF would face similar issues and those are the formats I am
>> familiar with off the top of my head.
>
> I would still argue that, in the general case, binary formats aren't going
> to be associated with ASCII code points except coincidentally.

I don't really know.  I'm sure many won't be.  I'm not sure how many
things like PDF exist, where while it is a binary format, has many
sections that are human readable.  I would assume that there are
enough formats similar to this to warrant a convenient way to do this,
but that's said with great bias. :)

-greg