= 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 [email protected]