From: Robert Feldt <feldt@...>
Date: 2003-05-29T19:45:24+09:00
Subject: Re: RCR: unpack/pack Bignum

On Thu, 29 May 2003 nobu.nokada@softhome.net wrote:

> > Sounds like a nice idea. however, for consistency we should also change
> > 'A10' to 'A(10)'? Might not be adopted since it breaks old code?
>
> Now 'A10' means a 10 bytes string.  Even if size specifier is
> provided it should not be changed, however, 'A(10)' would be
> legal and succeeding count also could be allowed; 'A(10)2' for
> 2 strings each consist of 10 bytes.
>
Ok, so 'A10' and 'A(10)' means the same thing. Sounds good. So with this
scheme

  [1].pack("N(5)") # => "\0\0\0\0\001"

but what about

  [0x010203].pack("N(2)")

? Should it truncate? MSB or LSB?

How can this be used when I have a Bignum that I don't know how large it
will be? 'N(*)'?

/Robert