From: Caleb Clausen <vikkous@...>
Date: 2010-08-06T11:29:09+09:00
Subject: Re: Data::Dumper Request

On 8/5/10, Brent Clark <brentgclarklist@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hiya
>
> I know we can use JSON, YAML, Marshal etc for representation of the data.
>
> Personally I find the above solutions clunky.
>
> I would do the job if I could (Still learning Ruby), but im hoping with the
> spirit of open source and communities, I would like to plead with community
> for someone to please release a gem like perls Data::Dumper.
>
> Hope someone would be so kind as to give me request some thought.

I wrote a gem called Ron (note capitalization; if you use lowercase
spelling, you'll get something else) which serializes ruby data
structures as ruby code which can be eval'd to get back the original
data. Seems to be exactly what you're asking for.

There's also amarshal, which serializes ruby data as ruby code that
reconstructs it, but it's not as declarative (it emits a series of
statements which reconstruct the object, instead of a single
expression) and therefore (IMNSHO) not as pretty.