From: Stephen  Sykes <sdsykes@...>
Date: 2004-09-04T19:45:22+09:00
Subject: Marshal and allocating objects

I would find it useful if Marshal were to use "allocate" to generate
new objects.  This is so that I can load unknown objects by doing
something like this:

class Object
def self.const_missing(name)
const_set(name, kl = Class.new)
kl
end
end

And then be able to load objects with marshal without getting
ArgumentError: undefined class/module.

For example (after running the above code)...

irb(main):026:0> M.allocate
=> #<M:0x2bb2168>

That works ok, but...

irb(main):029:0> Marshal.load("\004\010o:\006N\000")
ArgumentError: undefined class/module N
from (irb):29:in `load'
from (irb):29
from (null):0

If Mashal used allocate, and hence called const_missing, then the load
would not fail.  Sound reasonable?

Stephen Sykes