From: Bertram Scharpf <lists@...>
Date: 2007-06-02T12:57:37+09:00
Subject: Re: Getting the last N bytes of a string:

Hi,

Am Freitag, 01. Jun 2007, 20:15:54 +0900 schrieb Brian Candler:
> What's the simplest way to get only the last 10 bytes of a string?
> 
>     buf[-10,10]
> 
> doesn't work if buf is smaller than 10 bytes, as it returns nil. Is there
> anything simpler than
> 
>     buf[-10,10] || buf
> 
> ?

,From time to time I find myself trying to do something like
that. Maybe the best thing was if the String#slice method
were defined for using negative lengths but that's probably
too late.

For my personal use I wrote a litte extension doing exactly
that. You can have it if you want.

  http://www.bertram-scharpf.de/tmp/bs-ruby.tar.gz

Inspite of its shortness it's surely buggy. Parameter
definition will ever be a matter of taste. Don't try to
convince the core developpers there's a neccessity to proffer
a solution for this. No chance.

Bertram


-- 
Bertram Scharpf
Stuttgart, Deutschland/Germany
http://www.bertram-scharpf.de