= What is BinData?
Do you ever find yourself writing code like this?
io = File.open(...)
len = io.read(2).unpack("v")
name = io.read(len)
width, height = io.read(8).unpack("VV")
puts "Rectangle #{name} is #{width} x #{height}"
It’s ugly, violates DRY and feels like you’re writing Perl, not Ruby.
There is a better way. Here’s how you’d write the above using BinData.
class Rectangle < BinData::Record
endian :little
uint16 :len
string :name, :read_length => :len
uint32 :width
uint32 :height
end
io = File.open(...)
r = Rectangle.read(io)
puts "Rectangle #{r.name} is #{r.width} x #{r.height}"
BinData makes it easy to create new data types. It supports all the common
primitive datatypes that are found in structured binary data formats. Support
for dependent and variable length fields is built in.
= Installation
$ sudo gem install bindata
-or-
$ sudo ruby setup.rb
= Documentation
http://bindata.rubyforge.org/
-or-
$ rake manual
= Contact
If you have any queries / bug reports / suggestions, please contact me
(Dion Mendel) via email at dion@lostrealm.com