From: Terje Elde <terje+ruby-talk@...>
Date: 2002-05-20T10:49:23+09:00
Subject: Binary network protocols

Hi,

I'm starting on a projects which requires me to use a spesific network
protocol.  This protocol demands that I write certain size fields in Int16,
and other values as Int32.  The rest is just plain text.

While looking around I've found little or no indications of how to write a
number of a spesific size (ie, int16) to a network socket, or how to deal with
it at all.  I found a seemingly old int package which would allow me to do
things like 100.prec(Int16), but it doesn't seem to work:

irb(main):004:0> require '/usr/local/lib/ruby/1.6/site_ruby/i386-freebsd4/num/int.so'
true
irb(main):005:0> 100.prec(Int16)
100
irb(main):006:0> foo = 100.prec(Int16)
100
irb(main):007:0> putc foo
SystemStackError: stack level too deep
        from (irb):7:in `putc'
        from (irb):7
irb(main):008:0> 

The simple goal is to be able to write numbers of size Int16 or Int32 to a
socket.

Any help appreciated,
Terje