From: Hugh Sasse <hgs@...>
Date: 2005-10-27T19:58:11+09:00
Subject: Ruby Quiz for building up Ruby?

I put this suggestion to James Edward Gray II as a means to an
end.  I was thinking that if the quiz inspires people to tackle
manageable problems, then it might be that we can use it to help us
improve Ruby itself.  We may get components for packages built up
for the cases where people find them sufficiently interesting to
write.  

So, would anyone object to this strategy?

Is the problem expressed below sufficiently challenging to be of
interest to those who know they could tackle it?  Does it make a
good quiz?  James said I should ask, so I am.

<quote>
Date: Wed, 26 Oct 2005 18:11:12 +0100 (WEST)
From: Hugh Sasse <>
To: James Edward Gray II <>
Cc: Hugh Sasse <>
Subject: Another Ruby Quiz suggestion: generic diff/patch

I don't know if this is too big for the Ruby quiz.  I'm not sure how
to tackle it (though my maximum string length code might be of some
use) but I can tell you why it would be useful.  First: the
problem:

Given 2 versions of a file, which may be binary, generate the
difference in GDIFF format, detailed here:

http://www.w3.org/TR/NOTE-gdiff-19970901

For extra marks, implement the patch program that will generate the
new file from the old file and the GDIFF file.

The reason this is needed:

RFC3229  Delta encoding in HTTP

ftp://ftp.rfc-editor.org/in-notes/rfc3229.txt

may make use of this format, and it seems there are no rights to it
as there are for vcdiff referenced in the same document.

Why is this of interest to us?

Rubygems is facing the problem that as more gems are added the index
is getting far too big to handle.  Implementing RFC3229 seems
feasible, given the existence of a pure ruby - and thus as portable
as rubygems - differencing library.  The logic of the protocol is
fairly clear, but without some means to handle the differences it is
a non-starter.


So, is this too hard for a quiz?  Would the Ruby black-belts relish
the challenge?

        Hugh
</quote>

So I open this to the floor, so to speak...
        Hugh