[ruby-talk:5658] Q's on limit/depth in dump/_dump

Hi,

Some questions on the limit/aDepth in dump/_dump related to 
the following sample code:

class C
  def _dump(aDepth)
    puts "depth = #{aDepth}"
    "" # Dummy
  end
end
#Marshal.dump([C.new],1) # => exceed depth limit (ArgumentError)
Marshal.dump([C.new],2)



bash-2.04$ ruby -v dump_depth.rb
ruby 1.6.1 (2000-09-27) [i686-cygwin]
depth = 0

Questions:

1. Why does dump(Array, limit) subtract 2 from the limit/depth?
     My guess was that it would subtract one since the object in the array
     is a sub-object to the array "one step down".

2. If I write my own _dump functions should I subtract one or two from the
limit when passing it on to sub-objects?

Regards,

Robert