crc32

The crc32() function in PHP generates the cyclic redundancy checksum (CRC) polynomial of 32-bit lengths of a string, and returns it as an integer.

PHP

$checksum = crc32('hello world');
echo $checksum;
// => 222957957

Ruby

require 'zlib';
puts Zlib.crc32('hello world');
# => 222957957

is_string

The is_string() function allows you to check if a particular variable is a string (type).

PHP

$string1 = 'Hello World';
var_dump( is_string($string1) );
// => true

Ruby

string1 = 'Hello World';
puts string1.is_a?(String);
# => true

ucwords

The ucwords() function turns the first character of each word in a string to upper-case, if the first character is alphabetic.

PHP

echo ucwords("ruby is easy.");
=> // Ruby Is Easy.

Ruby doesn’t have a function which can capitalize all the words in a string - so to accomplish this it’s a little bit harder. You need to split the string into words, then capitalize the first character of each word, and then finally join all the words back into a string.

Ruby

puts "ruby is easy.".split(' ').select {|w| w.capitalize! || w }.join(' ');
=> # Ruby Is Easy.

lcfirst

The lcfirst() function returns a string, with the first character in lower case - only if the first character is alphabetic.

PHP

echo lcfirst("Java is OK.");
=> // java is OK.

Ruby

my_string = "Java is OK.";
 
puts my_string[0,1].downcase + my_string[1..-1];
=> # java is OK.

ucfirst

The ucfirst function returns a string, with the first character capitalized - only if the first character is alphabetic.

PHP

echo ucfirst("ruby is great!");
=> // Ruby is great!

Ruby

puts "ruby is great!".capitalize
=> # Ruby is great!

nl2br

The nl2br() function inserts HTML <br> tags before any new lines in a string.

PHP

echo nl2br("foo has a\n bar");
/* 
foo has a<br>
bar
*/

Ruby

p "foo has a\n bar".gsub("\n", "<br>\n")
# foo has a<br>
# bar

chop

The chop() function is only an alias of rtrim, which strips whitespace (or other characters) from the end of a string.

For further information about how chop() can be used, see rtrim().

unpack

The unpack function decodes a binary string into an array according to the format given as a parameter.

PHP

$binary_string = pack("nvc*", 0x1234, 0x5678, 65, 66);
$array = unpack("nvc*", $binary_string);

Ruby

a = [0x1234, 0x5678, 65, 66];
 
binary_string = a.pack("nvc*");
 
my_array = binary_string.unpack('nvc*');

pack

The pack function packs the given arguments into a binary string according to format provided as a parameter.

PHP

$binary_string = pack("nvc*", 0x1234, 0x5678, 65, 66);

Ruby

a = [0x1234, 0x5678, 65, 66];
 
binary_string = a.pack("nvc*");

bin2hex

The bin2hex function converts any string into an ASCII string containing the hexadecimal represenation of the original string. As the name of the function suggests, bin2hex is particularly useful to make a human-readable representation of binary strings.

PHP

$binary_string = pack("nvc*", 0x1234, 0x5678, 65, 66);
 
echo bin2hex($binary_string);
 
=> // 123478564142

Ruby doesn’t have a function equivalent to PHP’s bin2hex, but Bytes::unpack with a format string of H* will achieve the same functionality.

Ruby

a = [0x1234, 0x5678, 65, 66];
 
binary_string = a.pack("nvc*");
 
puts binary_string.unpack('H*');
=> # 123478564142