From: Matthew Moss <matthew.moss.coder@...>
Date: 2006-01-26T15:21:44+09:00
Subject: String.unpack endianess issue?

In irb 0.9 (ruby 1.8.2) in cygwin/WindowsXP:

> a = [0, 0, 0, 6]
=> [0, 0, 0, 6]
> x = a.pack("C*")
=> "\000\000\000\006"
> x.unpack("I")
=> [100663296]
> x.unpack("V")
=> [100663296]


I would have though that at least one of "I" or "V" in the unpack call
would have given me the correct answer, 6.  I'm reading this data out
of a binary file, stored in big-endian, but neither handles this.

I managed to get the right answer by doing:

x.unpack("C*").reverse.pack("C*").unpack("I")

But that seems rather silly.  So I guess I'm asking:

1. Is unpack broken, or is there a big-endian option I missed?
2. Is there a more generic module/library for reading binary files?
3. Is there an existing modules/lib for reading MIDI files?

thanks...