From: gabriele renzi <surrender_it@...1.vip.ukl.yahoo.com>
Date: 2003-07-30T11:30:55+09:00
Subject: Reading an integer out of 1..3 bytes

hi gurus and nubys,
I'm working on a tiny dumb client for the Gnutella2/MP network, and I
have packets like this:

[length of payload_length field][other stuff][payload_length field]
^^header

[payload]
^^data

now: payload_length can be 1..3 byte, encoded in little endian 
(same of my platform), is there a rubysh way of reading 1,2 or 3 bytes
on an integer from an IO?

PS 
in the spec-draft I can read this example:

ReadBytes( (BYTE*)&nPacketLength, nLenLen ); 

the varname are obvious, but 
I don't know what kind of code is this and what it actually does..