From: Morton Goldberg <m_goldberg@...>
Date: 2007-02-15T08:02:07+09:00
Subject: Re: Converting Bytes to  a Negative Integer


On Feb 14, 2007, at 3:27 PM, Harris Reynolds wrote:

> Let's say I have 4 bytes:
>
> 255 255 255 236
>
> The binary representation of this is:
>
> 11111111
> 11111111
> 11111111
> 11101100
>
> The decimal number should be -20.  Does anyone know how to convert  
> these 4 bytes into an Integer?

Maybe this will help:

data = ""
[255, 255, 255, 236].each { |e| data << e }
data # => "\377\377\377\354"
data.unpack('l').first # => -20

Regards, Morton