From: "MartinBosslet (Martin Bosslet)" Date: 2012-04-29T02:32:54+09:00 Subject: [ruby-core:44742] [ruby-trunk - Feature #6361] Bitwise string operations Issue #6361 has been updated by MartinBosslet (Martin Bosslet). nobu (Nobuyoshi Nakada) wrote: > Hi, > > (12/04/28 9:53), MartinBosslet (Martin Bosslet) wrote: > > A real advantage of having it built-in could be > > that this gives us the chance to fix #5741 at > > the same time. > > It doesn't explain anything about why they need to be built-in. You > can just make them an external library altogether, can't you? I thought about this, and yes, you are absolutely right, there's nothing I couldn't do in a separate C extension. The only remaining argument I have for built-in support: I would have liked to use the "secure memory erasure" feature within the OpenSSL extension, which I couldn't do if it's a separate library outside of the stdlib. I'm not sure if that's enough. Especially since we could add the functionality to OpenSSL directly. Being a "nice to have" feature in itself probably would not justify adding built-in support, but I'm fine with either decision. ---------------------------------------- Feature #6361: Bitwise string operations https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/6361#change-26306 Author: MartinBosslet (Martin Bosslet) Status: Feedback Priority: Normal Assignee: Category: core Target version: I know this has been discussed a lot in the past (and if there's still an open issue for this, I apologize, I couldn't find one), for example in [1]. While it is generally no problem to implement this on the fly, I still find that built-in support would be a real improvement. There are quite some use cases in cryptography where this would come in very handy, but I'm sure there are lots of other areas, too. While of course I understand the reasons that were given in the previous threads that ultimately lead to rejection, I still would like to reopen the discussion as I felt that in every thread so far the consensus was that having bitwise string operations would indeed be quite valuable. [1] http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-core/34586 -- http://bugs.ruby-lang.org/