On Apr 17, 2007, at 10:49 AM, Stephen Smith wrote:

> I frequently have to turn CSV files into files that follow different
> fixed-width formats.

Ah, I understand now.  Your project is to translate CSV to fixed- 
width.  Got it.

Obviously I'm biased, but FasterCSV should give you rich handling on  
the reading end, I think.  That part should be pretty covered.

Where you are likely to spend the effort is in the fixed-width  
writing.  There is an Array#pack, as others have pointed out, but you  
sound like you're after something higher level than that.  You want  
it to catch the datas and pack them as YYYYMMDD strings for you and  
the like.

If you come up with a good solution it may be worth generalizing and  
sharing, in my opinion.

James Edward Gray II