From: Einar Karttunen <ekarttun@...>
Date: 2002-05-20T20:38:03+09:00
Subject: Re: (newbie?) storing object in files

On 20.05 20:29, matt wrote:
> I'm looking for a way to write objects into files. It should be
> simple. There is the File/IO::print method, but this calls the to_s
> method of the object you pass to it, and you have the string in the
> file. But I have not yet found anything to convert it back to an
> object.

It is very simple to do it in ruby, just use Marshal.

you can read the documentation from 
http://www.rubycentral.com/ref/ref_m_marshal.html

here is the example from the page:

class Klass
  def initialize(str)
    @str = str
  end
  def sayHello
    @str
  end
end 

o = Klass.new("hello\n")
data = Marshal.dump(o)
obj  = Marshal.load(data)
obj.sayHello -> "hello\n"


- Einar Karttunen