From: dblack@...
Date: 2003-05-06T23:18:29+09:00
Subject: Re: Suggestion: String#pack

Hi --

On Tue, 6 May 2003, 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?

I approach this with trepidation, because (un)pack is one of these
things that I have to look up and talk myself through every time I use
it... but, for what little it's worth, I always thought there was a
pretty direct and sensible idea behind this, namely that one packed
things into a string and unpacked them into an array.

So the idea of packing a string into a string seems off-by-one to me,
logically -- a little too "magic".  I'd put it (with the above
trepidation :-) in the same category as a hypothetical Array#split,
say, which auto-joined the array on '' and then split the resulting
string.


David

-- 
David Alan Black
home: dblack@superlink.net
work: blackdav@shu.edu
Web:  http://pirate.shu.edu/~blackdav