From: Alan Moore <alan_moore@...>
Date: 2001-10-15T17:09:47+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:22557] String#succ w/non-alphanumeric strings

Hi all,

I've run into some odd behavior when I call the succ 
method on a string with no alphanumeric characters.
First, a demonstration:

  "***".succ                 >>  "**+"

  "*".succ                   >>  "\001+"

  sprintf("%c", 255).succ    >>  "\001\000"

  sprintf("*%c", 255).succ   >>  "\001+\000"

  sprintf("**%c", 255).succ  >>  "*+\000"

The first line is an example out of the pickaxe 
book.  What the rest are showing is that, if the 
first character gets incremented, whether it forces 
a carry or not, a '\001' character is prepended to 
the string.  I suspect that the '\001' is meant to 
be the successor to '\377' (or 255), and the last 
three lines are supposed to look like this:

  sprintf("%c", 255).succ    >>  "\001\001"

  sprintf("*%c", 255).succ   >>  "+\001"

  sprintf("**%c", 255).succ  >>  "*+\001"

Can anyone confirm this?  Or tell me how it's supposed 
to work?

--Alan