From: Peter Hickman <peter@...>
Date: 2007-11-21T20:22:38+09:00
Subject: Re: porting java methods to ruby

The simplest conversion is this:

def getTextCharacters(holholderForStartAndLength)
    case @eventType
    when TEXT
        if @usePC
            holderForStartAndLength[0] = @pcStart
            holderForStartAndLength[1] = @pcEnd - @pcStart
            return @pc
        else
            holderForStartAndLength[0] = @posStart
            holderForStartAndLength[1] = @posEnd - @posStart
            return @buf
        end
    when START_TAG, END_TAG, CDSECT, COMMENT, ENTITY_REF, 
PROCESSING_INSTRUCTION, IGNORABLE_WHITESPACE, DOCDECL
        holderForStartAndLength[0] = @posStart
        holderForStartAndLength[1] = @posEnd - @posStart
        return @buf
    when START_DOCUMENT, END_DOCUMENT
        holderForStartAndLength[0] = holderForStartAndLength[1] = -1
        return nil
    else
        raise "unknown text eventType: " + @eventType
    end
end

Of course this is untested and assumes that the class that defines it 
will also set up the various class variables (the @something in the 
code) and the constants (the SOMETHING in the code). You should also 
consider creating your own exception class for the raise.

Please also read "Pounding A Nail: Old Shoe or Glass Bottle?" by Alex 
Papadimoulis at 
http://weblogs.asp.net/alex_papadimoulis/archive/2005/05/25/408925.aspx

Why the hell are you not using an existing ruby xml library, you know 
that your's will be the slowest xml parser on earth?

This endeavour is made of fail.