From: Brian Candler <B.Candler@...>
Date: 2003-05-06T19:54:07+09:00
Subject: Re: Suggestion: String#pack

On Tue, May 06, 2003 at 01:55:51PM +0900, Austin Ziegler wrote:
> I have been working on some code recently where it would be very
> useful to do:
> 
>     "abcdef".pack(...)
> 
> Instead, I have to do:
> 
>     ["abcdef"].pack(...)
> 
> This is guaranteed to be at least a minor inefficiency because a
> temporary anonymous array needs to be created. Is there a good reason
> why String can't have a #pack method that Does The Right Thing?

Well, there are many other data types that you might want to pack (Fixnum
and Bignum for example). Should they have a #pack method as well? A common
example is packing integers into 4-byte strings:

   [1234].pack("N")  # OK

   1234.pack("N")    # ??

This becomes a bit like 'to_yaml' where ultimately everything has this
method, including Object, which I don't really like. Maybe it would be
better to turn it around and make module methods for packing individual
items: e.g.

   Pack.pack(1234,"N")
or
   Pack.n4(1234)   # network byte order, 4 bytes

Hmm, lots of methods though.

If you don't care about the slight inefficiency and just want the cleaner
interface, how about:

   class Object
     def pack(arg)
       [self].pack(arg)
     end
   end

Regards,

Brian.