From: Charles Mills <cmills@...>
Date: 2004-07-20T03:35:46+09:00
Subject: Re: str_buf safety

On Jul 19, 2004, at 11:25 AM, Charles Mills wrote:

> Is it safe so set the length of a String Buffer like so:
> {
> 	VALUE str_buf;
> 	long len = len_of_ext_data_source;
> 	unsigned char *buf = ptr_to_ext_data_source;
>
> 	str_buf = rb_str_buf_new(len);	
> 	/* bug: Dangerous to set Ruby String fields directly? */
> 	MEMCPY(RSTRING(str_buf)->ptr, buf, unsigned char, len);
> 	RSTRING(str_buf)->len = len;
> 	return str_buf;
> }
> Where len is the length of some buffer and buf is a pointer to that 
> buffer.
> -Charlie
>
I just realized this example suggests I should use:
VALUE str = rb_str_new(buf, len);
Unfortunately I cannot do that (without allocating 2 buffers) since I 
have a routine pack() which packs an object into a buffer.
I was hoping I could do the following:
{
	long len = pack_size(obj);
	VALUE str_buf = rb_str_buf_new(len);	
	pack(obj, RSTRING(str_buf)->ptr, len);
	RSTRING(str_buf)->len = len;
	return str_buf;
}

I am sure something similar is done with the read() system call in 
io.c, ... I will look there.
-Charlie