From: Mike Stok <mike@...>
Date: 2006-06-09T11:49:36+09:00
Subject: Re: Converting 8 bytes to a Float


On 8-Jun-06, at 10:39 PM, Harris Reynolds wrote:

> Mike... thanks for the tip.  My mileage is varying though... here  
> is the same irb session on my machine:
>
> irb(main):004:0> s = ""
> => ""
> irb(main):005:0> s << 64 << 53 << "\0" * 6
> => "@5\000\000\000\000\000\000"
> irb(main):006:0> s.unpack('D')
> => [6.73510288410787e-320]
>
> I'm not getting the clean result for some reason.
>

I'm on a PowerPC, and you're probably on an x86.  Our endian-ness is  
different.

D uses native format to unpack the bytes, if your bytes are laid out  
the way you said they are then you probably want to use G which is  
specifically "big endian".

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endian for more background.

Hope this helps,

Mike

-- 
Mike Stok <mike@stok.ca>
http://www.stok.ca/~mike/

The "`Stok' disclaimers" apply.