From: Bob X <bobx@...>
Date: 2002-08-22T11:34:36+09:00
Subject: Re: ANN: scanf for Ruby

Hal E. Fulton wrote:
> This is the product of the Austin Ruby Codefest 2002,
> a weekend event which concluded on Wednesday.
> 
> Contributing were David Alan Black, Hal Fulton,
> Nolan Darilek, and Jason Johnston.
> 
> This is a pure Ruby implementation of (most of)
> the C scanf(3) function.
> 
> Look in the RAA or at this URL:
> http://rubyhacker.com/code/scanf/
> 
> There are scanf methods added to String, IO, and
> Kernel (corresponding to C's sscanf(), fscanf(), 
> and plain vanilla scanf(), respectively). 
> 
> There are over 130 testcases, for those who
> want to know that.
> 
> Rationale for creating it:
> 
> 1. You can use regular expressions to retrieve
> substrings, but they're not converted automatically
> to Fixnum or Float. This takes care of that.
> 2. Given printf, sprintf, and String#%, scanf 
> makes sense for more completeness.
> 3. Another bone tossed to C programmers. Those 
> brain cells you used learning format strings won't
> go to waste.
> 
> Thanks,
> Hal Fulton
> 
> 
Very nice...thanks guys!