From: Robert Klemme <bob.news@...>
Date: 2004-06-06T20:13:43+09:00
Subject: Re: Chars in Ruby


"Georgy" <see@the.end> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:Nqhwc.15070$tH1.434991@twister.southeast.rr.com...
> Hi,
>
> I've been playing with characters (OK, there's no such type in
> Ruby, it's rather like characters in C - just plain integer numbers).
>
> String of length 1 to a char:   str1[0] --> chr_int
> Char to a String of length 1:   chr_int.chr --> str1
>
> Get a char from a string:    str[n]    --> chr_int   # or nil
> Put a char into a string:    str[n] = chr_int
>
> So we can think of a "char" as a single element of a string.
> Now, having that an integer is a single element of an array,
> we'd like to have functions/expressions for converting arrays
> of integers and strings back and forth.
>
> Array to String:    [97,98,99].map{|e|e.chr}.join --> "abc"

This is more efficient:

[97,98,99].inject(""){|str,ch|str<<ch}

But of course the pack / unpack pair is the most appropriate way to do it as
others told already.

    robert