From: Thomas Sondergaard <tsondergaard@...>
Date: 2002-05-13T07:04:10+09:00
Subject: stringIO extension?

Hi,
 
I just skimmed through the latest messages in ruby-dev using babelfish
(the babelfished links on http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/ml.html are
broken, by the way) and saw that stringIO is being discussed. I would
like to see StringIO being extended a bit to allow more general usage,
but I don't speak japanese, so I hope my point will be heard anyway, if
I post it here.
 
I would like to see the stringIO class be extended or rewritten, so it
can be used to implement a streaming facility for arbitrary data
sources/sinks. For input I'd basically like to see stringIO call
underflow() when it reaches eof. The default underflow() would do
nothing, but a subclass could overwrite it to "refill" the string and
then use the string as a buffering space that is refilled in chunks.
 
Similarly I suggest that stringIO for output could be configured with a
limit, at which point overflow() would be called. overflow() could then
pass the data on to whatever data sink it desires.
 
Basically the scheme employed by streambuf in the Standard C++ Library.
 
How hard would it be to extend stringIO with these facilities?
 
Best regards,
 
Thomas
 
PS! Actually I think it would make sense to implement some sort of
AbstractIO and implement stringIO on top of that, instead of using
stringIO directly as a facility for implementing other IO classes
 
PPS! If you haven't tried babelfishing in ruby-dev I suggest you give it
a go. It is almost impossible to decipher the meaning, but it's a quite
amusing read :-)