From: jzakiya@... (Jabari Zakiya)
Date: 2002-08-30T00:32:58+09:00
Subject: .bin & .b2h

In "The Ruby Way" on p.80
Hal Fulton provides this String method for .bin,
(to go along with .oct and .hex) [1.6.7]

class String
  def bin
    val = self.strip
    pattern= /^([+-]?)(0b)?([01]+)(.*)$/
    parts = pattern.match(val)
    return 0 if not parts
    sign = parts[1]
    num  = parts[3]
    eval(sign + "0b" + num)
  end
end

These examples were given.

a = "10011001".bin     # 153
b = "0b10011001".bin   # 153
c = "0B1001001".bin    # 0
d = "nothing".bin      # 0
e = "0b100121001".bin  # 9

Here's a shorter version which produces the same output.

class String
  def bin
    val = self.strip
    val[0,2] == "0b" ? val.oct : ("0b"+val).oct
  end
end

1) Since "0B1010101".oct and "0b1010101.oct, produce the
same output, shouldn't "0B"+val allow a valid conversion 
from binary to decimal also?

Here's another pearl, er, ruby for your toolkit.
I needed this to convert binary strings to hex strings.

Example:   "100110110101" =>  "9b5"

class String
  def b2h
    val = self.strip
    sprintf("%x", (val[0,2] == "0b" ? val.oct : ("0b"+val).oct))
  end
end

Here are some examples:
"10101010101".b2h      # "555"
"0b111101001100".b2h   # "f4c"
"0B101010".b2h         # "0"
"182834".b2h           # "1"

2) What's a better, more Rubyish, name for b2h, if any?

Jabari Zakiya