From: James Edward Gray II <james@...>
Date: 2005-04-27T04:07:47+09:00
Subject: Clearing StringIO

I'm working with StringIO to write some test code and it is behaving 
strangely.  Check out this example:

irb(main):001:0> require "stringio"
=> true
irb(main):002:0> fake_file = StringIO.new
=> #<StringIO:0x3119cc>
irb(main):003:0> fake_file.puts "This is a test."
=> nil
irb(main):004:0> fake_file.string
=> "This is a test.\n"
irb(main):005:0> fake_file.truncate(0)
=> 0
irb(main):006:0> fake_file.string
=> ""
irb(main):007:0> fake_file.puts " <= Junk!"
=> nil
irb(main):008:0> fake_file.string
=> "\000\000\000\000\000\000\000\000\000\000\000\000\000\000\000\000 <= 
Junk!\n"

Is that a bug?  Yuck.

I hand my "fake_file" off to some code to play with, but keep a 
reference for my testing purposes.  At times, I need to clear the 
accumulated output, but as you can see truncate() is giving me fits.

Can anyone suggest how I might clear the StringIO object, without 
replacing it?

Thanks.

James Edward Gray II