From: timsuth@... (Tim Sutherland)
Date: 2002-04-07T17:17:01+09:00
Subject: Re: Socket API

In article <20020407021324.GE6112@killik.co.uk>, Tom Gilbert wrote:
>Could someone tell me how to create a "struct sockaddr stored in a
>string" in order to pass it to Socket.bind?

Use Array#pack. For example, noting

 struct sockaddr_in {
 	short int sin_family;
	unsigned short int sin_port;
        struct in_addr sin_addr;
	unsigned char sin_zero[8];
 }

and using the Pragmatic Programmers' documentation on Array#pack,

sockaddr = [Socket::AF_INET, 1234, 192, 168, 1, 1, ''].pack('snCCCCa8')

>All of Socket's instance methods take "struct sockaddr strings" and I
>can't for the life of me see how to create one. It's 3 lines of C to do
>what I want to and it doesn't seem possible in Ruby... (connect to a
>remote host using a specific local address).
>
>If someone could explain the reasoning behind wrapping C structs in
>strings instead of having a SockAddr class I'd love to hear it too.
>Because frankly it looks disgusting.