From: Daniel Berger <Daniel.Berger@...>
Date: 2005-11-04T06:49:14+09:00
Subject: Possible Array#pack issue on OS X?

Hi all,

I've got a user who's having a problem with the spreadsheet-excel package.  It 
looks like the Format#font_biff method is returning a bogus result.  Here's 
some code that simulates the default behavior:

# fontbiff.rb
font        = "Arial"
dyheight    = 200
cch         = font.length
length      = 0x0F + cch
record      = 0x31
reserved    = 0x00
grbit       = 0x00
color       = 32767
bold        = 0x0190
font_script = 0
underline   = 0
font_family = 0
font_charset = 0

fields = [dyheight, grbit, color, bold, font_script, underline]
fields.push(font_family, font_charset, reserved, cch)

header = [record, length].pack("vv")
data   = fields.pack("vvvvvCCCCC")

p header + data + font

That should result in this string (on big endian machines):

"1\000\024\000\310\000\000\000\377\177\220\001\000\000\000\000\000\000\005Arial"

This can be confirmed by running this snippet, which should give you the same 
string:

require "spreadsheet/excel"
include Spreadsheet
p Format.new.font_biff

But he's reporting this as the result:

"\0001\000\024\000\310\000\000\177\377\001\220\000\000\000\000\000\000\005Arial"

Any ideas what's happening here?

Thanks,

Dan

PS - Come to think of it, I forgot to ask him which version of Ruby he's 
running, and which version of OSX.