From: Lyle Johnson <lyle@...>
Date: 2003-11-18T06:47:18+09:00
Subject: Re: pack bug on 64-bit ruby

Daniel Berger wrote:

> Looks like there's a 64-bit related bug in pack():
> 
> irb(main):007:0> [-1].pack("V")
> RangeError: integer 18446744073709551615 too big to convert to `unsigned
> int'
>         from (irb):7:in `pack'
>         from (irb):7

If Array#pack is supposed to output a four-character string for the 
*unsigned* long value, I think maybe this shouldn't work for 64-bit. 
You're passing in a value of -1, which is 2**64 - 1 when represented as 
an unsigned long on a 64-bit machine. You can't pack that into four 
characters (bytes).

Out of curiosity, what happens if you instead try this?

     [-1].pack("L_")

Note the trailing underscore. If I read the code right, this should do 
the right thing.