From: Tom Payne <twp20@...>
Date: 2002-09-11T01:14:25+09:00
Subject: Re: Reading a specific offset into a file.

In article <9ba6a8da.0209100651.449803e8@posting.google.com>, Khurram wrote:
> What is an easy way to read a specific byte offset of a file?  Right
> now I'm going through and using the .getc function until I get to the
> specific offset I need.  This is very tedious because I just have a
> list of .getc calls.  THere must be an easier way to do this?
> 
> Right now I'm doing this in order to get to 4th byte in file:
> -------------------------------
> a = File.open("example.dat")
> a.getc
> a.getc
> a.getc
> a.getc 
> byte_4 = a.getc
> a.close
> -------------------------------
> Thanks,
> 
> - Khurram

You could use a loop:

a = File.open("example.dat")
4.times { a.getc }
byte_4 = a.getc
a.close

;-)

Of course, IO#seek is what you really need, or possibly even
IO#read/String#unpack.

T