Having just announced format_engine version 0.4.0, things seem to be speeding along as I now announce format_engine version 0.5.1 and ruby_sscanf version 0.1.1.

These two gems are rather tightly coupled. The ruby_sscanf gem uses the capabilities of the format_engine to create a Ruby translation of the POSIX ‘C’ sscanf routine. This allows a formatted string to be processed into the data elements contained within. The new version of the format_engine is required to add some features required by the ruby_sscanf gem.

I thought a great deal about the idea of merging the ruby_sscanf gem into the format_engine, but in the end, concluded that they did different things despite the high degree of coupling. Further, ruby_sscanf modifies (or monkey patches) the base String class, and that was something that might not always be desired. So two separate gems.

These may be found at:

format_engine gem, format_engine source code

ruby_sscanf gem, ruby_sscanf source code 

I hope all Ruby programmers find these programming tools to be useful.

Yours Truly

Peter Camilleri (aka Squidly Jones)