[ruby-talk:4849] FEATURE REQUEST: Fixnum bitfields

Well currently have the following behavior:

array[index]       access one element of array
array[index, len]  access slice of array
string[index]      access one character of array
string[index, len] access substring in array
fixnum[bit]	   access one bit in number
bignum[bit]	   access one bit in number

why not:

fixnum[bit,len]    access a bitfield in number
bignum[bit,len]    access a bitfield in number

It seems to be a natural extension from the current behavior, and
would be useful.  I know I can get the same behavior with
String.unpack, but it is not nearly as convenient.

Also perhaps:

fixnum[Range]      access a bitfield in number
bignum[Range]      access a bitfield in number

but I haven't used Range's enough to know if that is useful.  It is
consistant.


[[ My friend here would accuse me of feature bloat, but this seems
   like a useful and obvious extention. ]]


While I am on the subject of bitfields where is another question.
Supose I read a series or raw 256 bit data chunks from a file into
Strings.  How can I transfer them to Bignum's so i can do bitwise ORs
and ANDs on them.  (I want to convert my CRC checksum generator for
CPU caches from perl to Ruby.)

-Wayne