From: Jamis Buck <jgb3@...>
Date: 2004-10-23T13:23:22+09:00
Subject: Ruby/DL: bignum->long

Using Ruby/DL, it seems as though a 32-bit integer with the MSB set 
cannot be converted to a long integer:

   require 'dl'

   DL::dlopen("libc.so.5") do |libc|
     isdigit  = libc['isdigit', 'CH']
     p 0x40000000.class
     print(isdigit.call(0x40000000), "\n")
     p 0x80000000.class
     print(isdigit.call(0x80000000), "\n")
   end

The above will print the first one successfully, even though 0x40000000 
is a Bignum. The second one results in an error:

   in `call': bignum too big to convert into `long' (RangeError)

Is this a bug, or a feature? Is there a workaround? Any advice would be 
   appreciated.

Thanks,

Jamis

-- 
Jamis Buck
jgb3@email.byu.edu
http://www.jamisbuck.org/jamis