From: David Holroyd <ruby-talk@...>
Date: 2006-02-22T22:42:52+09:00
Subject: Re: Question about String.unpack

On Wed, Feb 22, 2006 at 04:19:07AM +0900, Jacob Repp wrote:
> I'm curious about binary protocol parsing in ruby and have scratched
> around for some kind of BinaryReader-ish interface for strings. Seems
> like you could solve this if you know that your struct is in a string
> you could say:
> 
> str = fd.sysread(n)
> name = str.read_str(30)
> size = str.read_double
> age = str.read_int
> stuff = str.read_c
> 
> I was going to write a native extension to do this after I finish my
> current Ruby/AIO extension project. Unless there is something that
> does this already (maybe in a cleaner/more ruby-ish way?)

Yes, I've needed one of these too (read + write).  My application was
handling a binary UDP protocol.  String#unpack doesn't support some of
the bizarro data formating that this protocol seems to have, so I cooked
up ReadBuffer/WriteBuffer[1] classes with a few methods a bit like those
above.

...just my 2-pence-use-case.


dave

[1] http://svn.badgers-in-foil.co.uk/alchemic/trunk/na_protocol.rb

-- 
http://david.holroyd.me.uk/