From: Joel VanderWerf <vjoel@...>
Date: 2007-07-17T10:02:41+09:00
Subject: Re: How to reclaim memory without GC.start

Travis D Warlick Jr wrote:
> Lionel Bouton wrote:
>> Actually, as variable affectation is done by reference
> 
> I knew that... woops... **beats head on keyboard**
> 
> However, A chance to redeem myself: I remembered that IO#read returns a
> string, so change the while to:
> 
>     while buffer[0...512] = file.read(512)
> 
> That should overwrite the contents of the buffer

Do you mean file.read(512, buffer) ?


---------------------------------------------------------------- IO#read
      ios.read([length [, buffer]])    => string, buffer, or nil
------------------------------------------------------------------------
      Reads at most length bytes from the I/O stream, or to the end of
      file if length is omitted or is nil. length must be a non-negative
      integer or nil. If the optional buffer argument is present, it
      must reference a String, which will receive the data.

      At end of file, it returns nil or "" depend on length. ios.read()
      and ios.read(nil) returns "". ios.read(positive-integer) returns
      nil.

         f = File.new("testfile")
         f.read(16)   #=> "This is line one"


-- 
       vjoel : Joel VanderWerf : path berkeley edu : 510 665 3407