From: Mark Hubbart <discordantus@...>
Date: 2004-12-02T16:56:53+09:00
Subject: Re: Does Ruby have anything like isprint?

Hi,

On Thu, 2 Dec 2004 15:17:43 +0900, Martin Kahlert <mkcon@gmx.de> wrote:
> Hi!
> 
> I want to print out the 'printable' characters from a binary
> data stream.
> Is there anything like C's isprint() function in Ruby?

Not that I know of. But here's a way to get a copy of a string with
all non-printable characters stripped out:

# get a string with all possible byte values:
str = (0..255).map{|b| b.chr}.join
# print all printable characters:
print str.gsub(/[[:^print:]]+/, "") 

That gsub there finds all runs of non-printing characters, and
replaces them with an empty string (ie, nothing).

HTH,
Mark