From: darren kirby <bulliver@...>
Date: 2007-06-30T01:44:06+09:00
Subject: Issue related to class initialization and irb

Hello all,

My class is a library that allows users to read information/tags etc from Flac 
files.

When the class is initialized in irb the content of every single instance 
variable is dumped to the console. This library parses a lot of data from 
various blocks, and has many data structures to hold it all. As such, this 
output can contain as much as two screens worth. Some of this data is 
non-readable and is for 'top-secret internal use only'. That is, it isn't 
secret, but it has no value or use to the user directly ;). 

Anyway, I would really like to clean up this output and have irb print only 
eg:

=>  #<FlacInfo:0x6f97cca4>

Or perhaps the above with a brief enumeration of the blocks found and their 
sizes and/or offsets. To this end I tried defining the class' to_s method, 
and modifying the initialize method's return value. Neither had an effect. 
How might I accomplish this?

Thanks for consideration,
-d
-- 
darren kirby :: Part of the problem since 1976 :: http://badcomputer.org
"...the number of UNIX installations has grown to 10, with more expected..."
- Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson, June 1972