From: Sam Roberts <sroberts@...>
Date: 2003-05-07T13:06:31+09:00
Subject: Re: Suggestion: String#pack

Quoteing austin@halostatue.ca, on Wed, May 07, 2003 at 05:59:02AM +0900:
> On Tue, 6 May 2003 23:18:29 +0900, dblack@superlink.net wrote:
> I'm finding that the code I'm working with has several cases where I
> could use String#pack or Fixnum#pack because I'm having to do:
> 
>   [foo].pack(template)
> 
> .. and it's in loops, so the minimal inefficiency in creating an
> anonymous Array will add up over time.

Why not pre-create the Array:


packee = []


loop {

  packee[0] = foo
  packee.pack(template)
}

Then instead of creating the Array, you're just asigning to the
first element, which should be reasonably speedy, one hopes!

Would this not work?
Sam


> can profile at this point, so I can't *prove* that it's
> inefficient.)
> 
> I don't think that this is too "magic"; I think that having to
> create an anonymous array feels wrong, personally.
> 
> BTW, Brian, the inefficiency of creating an anonymous Array -- in a
> loop -- is precisely why I want String#pack and Fixnum#pack (I don't
> want a generic #pack); a Float#pack may be useful.
> 
> I think that it could be possible to have these be named differently
> (per Matz's suggestion); perhaps #encode? I donno.
> 
> -austin
> -- Austin Ziegler, austin@halostatue.ca on 2003.05.06 at 16:38:07
> 
>