Nested Attribute Dictionaries

brewsky

I can't seem to find a maximum length for an attribute string...

@jim said:

These are things you would need to experiment with.

It's possible to store at least a string containing 100000 characters(looping much more than that freezes my pc).
` i = 0;
s = ""

while i < 100000 do
s = s + "a"
i +=1;
end

model = Sketchup.active_model
model.set_attribute "testdictionary", "test", s
v = model.get_attribute "testdictionary", "test"

puts s.length
puts v.length`

returns:
100000
100000

The file size increases substantially, storing a single string of 100000 long takes it from 8 to 200 kB.
But maybe a text-file would increase similarly, it's a pretty long string...

Dan Rathbun

@brewsky said:

The file size increases substantially, storing a single string of 100000 long takes it from 8 to 200 kB.
But maybe a text-file would increase similarly, it's a pretty long string...

IF the skp files are encoding text in UTF-16 then there would be 2 bytes per ASCII character.

IF it encodes in UTF-8, there are supposed to be only 1 byte for the characters in the ASCII set.

thomthom

SKP files are for the most of it two-byte UTF-16 encoded. (Some old data blocks appear to be ASCII.) All though, the strings you get from the Ruby API is UTF-8 encoded.

Dan Rathbun

So then is there a normal, and a backup dictionary in the file ?

thomthom

@dan rathbun said:

So then is there a normal, and a backup dictionary in the file ?

Backup?

Not sure what you mean.

But when I have inspected .skp files I saw no duplicate of any attributes blocks - and the attributes data blocks where in UTF-16.

Dan Rathbun

@brewsky said:

` i = 0;
s = ""

while i < 100000 do
s = s + "a"
i +=1;
end`

it's easier in Ruby to do:
s = 'a' * 100000

thomthom

@dan rathbun said:

@brewsky said:

` i = 0;
s = ""

while i < 100000 do
s = s + "a"
i +=1;
end`

it's easier in Ruby to do:
s = 'a' * 100000

I'm going to guess it's a bit faster as well.

Dan Rathbun

@thomthom said:

Backup? Not sure what you mean.

Yes I meant duplicate internal backups, like how a floppy disk has a backup of the master boot record, that can be restored if the primary gets corrupted. (Not that many are using floppies these days, but it's an example.)

brewsky

@dan rathbun said:

it's easier in Ruby to do:
s = 'a' * 100000

Ruby continues to amaze me, it 'reads' so logical!
Still much to learn...

Dan Rathbun

@thomthom said:

But when I have inspected .skp files I saw no duplicate of any attributes blocks - and the attributes data blocks where in UTF-16.

I wonder if we could use Zlib to compress data before writing it to dictionaries ??

Unzipping it on a read ?

thomthom

Another neat usage of * is for joining arrays:
[1,2,3,4,5] * ' - '
Returns:
"1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5"

thomthom

@dan rathbun said:

@thomthom said:

But when I have inspected .skp files I saw no duplicate of any attributes blocks - and the attributes data blocks where in UTF-16.

I wonder if we could use Zlib to compress data before writing it to dictionaries ??

I'd love to be able to use zipping in my projects. Think I looked at it some time ago and people had tried to find ways to make it work properyl within SketchUp ruby with mixed results..