1 

     2 Preface:

     3 

     4 	Ruby provides an automatic constant called DATA, which is an IO object

     5 	that references all text in the current file under an __END__ token.

     6 

     7 	I find it convenient to use the __END__ area to store all sorts of

     8 	stuff, rather than have to worry about distributing separate files.

     9 

    10 

    11 The problem:

    12 

    13 	The DATA constant is determined from whatever ruby believes $0 to be.

    14 	It doesn't work inside of other required libraries, so you'll see stuff

    15 	like this all the time:

    16 

    17 	END = File.open( __FILE__ ).read.split( /^__END__/, 2 ).last

    18 

    19 	It works, but it's more work than I want to do.

    20 

    21 

    22 A workaround:

    23 

    24 	Chunker solves this by parsing __END__ tokens for you, and making it

    25 	available in the form of a 'DATA_END' constant.  It installs this

    26 	constant into the class that includes Chunker, so you can use it again

    27 	and again, assuming you use a different file for each class.

    28 

    29 	It also automatically parses out other things that look like tokens, so

    30 	you can easily have multiple, distinct documents all embedded into the

    31 	__END__ block.

    32 

    33 

    34 Usage:

    35 

    36 	There is no direct interface to Chunker.  Just include it from a

    37 	class to have that file's __END__ data blocks magically become DATA_*

    38 	IO constants within that class.

    39 

    40 

    41 Example:

    42 

    43 	This produces the string "Yep.\n".

    44 

    45 

    46 		require 'chunker'

    47 		class Foom

    48 			include Chunker

    49 		end

    50 

    51 		puts Foom.new.class.const_get( :DATA_WICKED ).read

    52 

    53 		__END__

    54 		Stuff in the END block!

    55 		__WOW__

    56 		Ultimate success!

    57 		__WICKED__

    58 		Yep.

    59