From: Josef Wolf <jw@...>
Date: 2009-09-04T00:40:10+09:00
Subject: Re: Data::Dumper for Ruby?

On Fri, Sep 04, 2009 at 12:04:30AM +0900, Gregory Brown wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 3, 2009 at 11:00 AM, Josef Wolf<jw@raven.inka.de> wrote:


Thanks for the fast answers!

>> One of the first things I am missing is something like perl's Data::Dumper
>> module. �This module is able to take a (nested) data structure and dump it
>> in perl syntax.
> 
> Do you actually need the syntax preserved, or are you just trying to
> serialize data?

The purpose is to check whether the data structures I have built (or am about
to build) are how they should be.  So the important thing here is that it is
easy to grasp visually.

> If the latter, use Marshal or the YAML std library, or consider JSON
> (standard in 1.9, a gem in 1.8)

I know YAML, and I actually use it a lot for configuration or persistent
storage. But I find YAML somewhat hard to read and understand when the data
structures start getting complicated.  With output from Data::Dumper, you
fire up emacs to easily find matching scopes.