From: Robert Feldt <feldt@...>
Date: 2003-05-28T06:27:45+09:00
Subject: RCR: unpack/pack Bignum

I'm sure this has been discussed before and maybe there are good reasons
why its not in there (or I've really missed something) already but I'd
like to see a simple and fast way to unpack/pack bignums out to/into
"raw" string data.

Ok, you can currently do along the lines of

def pack_int(integer)
  ["%x" % integer].pack("H*")
end

def unpack_int(str)
  str.unpack("H*").first.hex
end

but its conceptually messy imho and slower than it could be. Also since we
can now pack quad's ie. numbers that have a binary representation that
fits in 8 bytes I see no reason why we shouldn't go all the way.

Comments/Ideas/Critique?

Regards,

Robert Feldt