From: Evgeni Belin <ebelin.ebiz@...>
Date: 2008-04-24T05:35:11+09:00
Subject: String#chop chops last byte, not char

This is happening in ruby 1.8.6:

% ruby --version
ruby 1.8.6 (2007-09-23 patchlevel 110) [i686-darwin9.1.0]

Documentation says:

% ri String#chop
...Returns a new +String+ with the last character removed. If...

This is irb and Rails script/console sessions:

% ./script/console
Loading development environment (Rails 2.0.2)
>> "абвгд".chop
=> "абвг\320"
>> "абвгд".chop.chop
=> "абвг"

% irb
>> "абвгд".chop
=> "\320\260\320\261\320\262\320\263\320"
>> "д".chop
=> "\320"
>> "д".chop.chop
=> ""


As you can see chop removes last byte vs last char.  Btw, problem
happened while stuffing strings into legacy (ms sql server) db,
varchar(255) column.  I came up with the following method (see below).
Maybe there is an easier alternative?

  def truncate(text, size = 254, suffix = "...")
    if text.nil? then return end
    l = size - suffix.size
    if text.size > size
      truncated_text = ""
      text.each_char do |c|
        if truncated_text.size + c.size < l
          truncated_text << c
        else
          break
        end
      end
      truncated_text += suffix
    else
      text
    end
  end

I did not report this as a bug, since I am not sure who is supposed to
be right - ruby or documentation.
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