Read binary file as string in Ruby

Question

I need an easy way to take a tar file and convert it into a string (and vice versa). Is there a way to do this in Ruby? My best attempt was this:

file = File         


        

Answer 1

If you need binary mode, you'll need to do it the hard way:

s = File.open(filename, 'rb') { |f| f.read }

If not, shorter and sweeter is:

s = IO.read(filename)